"Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d, have mercy! I will light thee a candle--so bright, so tall!--He is innocent! Help, have mercy, Holy Mary, Mother, help!"
She babbled and sobbed and wrung her hands. On her knees she crept through the room and beat the floor with her brow. What should she do, how could she prove that her William was not he who had set the fires?
The night was flying, the c.o.c.ks were already beginning to crow, soon the ruddy morning would be peering in at the window. What should she do, how should she help him?
"Holy Mary, that art highly favored, hail to thee! I vow thee--"
There had been fires in the village; now that William was in jail there were no more fires; but what if--Her eyes suddenly began to stare; drawing a deep breath, she unclasped her folded hands, her lips ceased to murmur, she seized hold of her head and turned herself about as if reeling, and became at once quite calm; through the gloom of her tortured brain there flashed an inspiration: what if, after all, there should be fires again?
They were all far out in the fields. Even the old people and the children had gone out with the others. The children, dancing ahead of the wagons, stirring up the dust of the street, the old people plodding along after, the infant, or the loaf of bread and the jug of coffee in the dosser.
Only the appealing lowing of a cow that with full udder stood in the stall, the plaintive bleating of a goat that had been staked by the house, the furious grunting of a pig that longed to get out of the hot sty and roll on the ground, animated now and then the stillness of death that hung over the village.
It was not yet mid-day, but the sun was already very oppressive, its rays were actually heavy; they weighed down everything in the gardens: the climbing beans, the broad-leaved turnips, the gra.s.s turned to autumn yellow in the drought. The two closely built rows of houses blew hot air into each other"s faces; they were like ovens. All of the timbers, which were of pine, the doors and window frames sweated pitch and, dry to the marrow, gaped in wide crannies. Now and then came a gust of wind; but it brought no refreshment, it merely stirred up the dust, and the air became closer than ever. Perfect harvest weather; the blue sky with a touch of gray from the dusty exhalations of the grain fields and a suggestion of dinginess from the hot breath of the steaming earth.
From the chimneys of the empty cottages no smoke was curling; today n.o.body came home to dinner, today n.o.body rested until evening, when the last load of grain should have been housed. Carefully the housewives had put out the fire on the hearth before they went to the fields, even pouring water on any embers that might still contain life.
There was smoke only at Widow Driesch"s. She was the only woman at home, and she had a fire on her hearth, as always. A big fire. Was she baking cakes? Had her son come home and was that why there was such a cloud of smoke in her flue? Dense gray clouds poured from the chimney and settled heavily upon the roof. And now she opened the door, the back door by the side of which was the brush pile; Widow Driesch came out, in one hand a box of matches and in the other an oil can.
Carefully she poured the last drop over the dry pile of brush, she scratched a match--hi, the whole box caught fire, she dropped it and a swift flame greedily lapped up the oil-soaked twigs.
With wide-open eyes the old woman stood by and saw them burn. The flame quickly climbed up the wall of the house--crash!--the back window burst from the heat. Miauing, the black cat jumped out and with singed fur sought safety in flight.
She too now went away, slowly, one step at a time, often stopping and looking back: would not the fire go out again? She began to feel anxious. Had she perhaps not carefully enough raked the great fire in the hearth out into the room and spread it about the floor? And covered it with straw and oil-soaked rags? All her woolen things, her black Sunday gown and the kerchief--a gift from her deceased husband--she had torn to bits for the purpose. Had she perhaps not put sufficient burning chips into the bed, among the feathers of the pillows that she had ripped open? Oh, yes! The bed was already burning like a torch when she had tottered out of the back door, half smothered, with eyes blinded by smoke. Oh, yes, she could rest easy on that score, the house would burn surely enough, there would be a flame that all the village could see!
Somewhat more rapidly she walked on. She intended to go up to the pasture. Up on the hill top she could best see how the fire rose higher and higher, how it caught the roof, which her late husband had thatched anew for the wedding; how it consumed the house that her grandfather in paradise had built in days of yore!
She only hoped that n.o.body would come home too soon, before the house was really burning, was burning like mad!
She still worried. Concealed by the grove of fir-trees, the village was now out of her sight. Was the house still burning, was it really still burning?
She ran and panted uphill. Up, up to the pasture! There she could see, there--
"Ah!" A long scream of insane delight arose tumultuously from her breast. There the village lay at her feet. A thick cloud of smoke had settled down upon it. But now, now--ah!--now there was a red flame shooting through the cloud! It divided, a whirlwind was blowing in it, fiery tongues stuck up, gigantic, joyously bright, and lapped to the right, and lapped to the left, and united, and flowed into one another, and grew longer and broader--became a fiery ribbon that unrolled more and more and speedily wound itself out as if from a spool.
With wide-staring eyes the woman gazed: Jesus, that was a fire--that was a fire!
It was a long while ago that Widow Driesch"s cottage was the only one on fire. Dried by the drought and the ardent sun, the thatched roofs had been kindled like tinder. Now the cottages were burning, four, five. But as though this were not enough, the wind got behind and blew air into the flames. The conflagration swept down one whole side of the village; in ghostly haste the flames leaped from gable to gable. Like mats rolled together by a scrupulous hand, the thatched roofs curled up; first they sizzled, then they flared, but then--hi!--the ripe grain, every kernel a spark, exploded like powder and shot sheaves of fire into the air. A noisome exhalation mounted to the heavens and darkened the sky; from the stables came the desperate cries of the confined animals.
Katherine Driesch did not hear the wretched bellowing of the creatures dying in the flames. She did not hear the cries which suddenly like an alarm were wafted to her from far down in the fields. She did not hear the crashing of beams and walls--she merely saw. Saw, with triumphant eyes, a wild, undulating tempest of flame, a glow, gigantic, blotting out the sunshine with its redness, a torch, tall as a pine-tree, brandished by the wind and flaring up to heaven, up to the eternal throne of the Most Merciful.
The mother fell to her knees upon the pasture, upon the green grazing ground of the herds, and stretched wide her arms and clasped them together again, as though she were taking some one to her heart; and wept and laughed and raised her trembling hands high above her gray head and cried louder than the hundred voices of the on-rushing villagers--cried into the tumult of the bellowing beasts, into the crashing of the beams and the crackling of the flames:
"My William! Now he will come!"
EDUARD VON KEYSERLING
GAY HEARTS (1909)
TRANSLATED BY BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, PH.D.
a.s.sistant Professor of German, University of Wisconsin
At Kadullen dinner was served in summer as early as four o"clock, so as to leave the evening clear for summer amus.e.m.e.nts. Then the afternoon light rested steadily on the extensive white garden-front and the three ponderous gables of the manor. In the rectilinear beds the stocks glinted like bright, wavy silk, and the scent of the box-hedges was warm and bitter. A servant stationed himself on the steps of the garden porch and rang a large bell as signal that it was time to dress for dinner.
The host, old Count Hamilcar of Wandl-Dux, was already completely dressed and came out into the garden with his guest, Professor von Pinitz. Count Hamilcar, very tall and slender in his black frock-coat, had a slight stoop. His Panama was pulled low on his forehead. The smooth-shaven face with the long, thin-lipped mouth had a touch of the ascetic, like those faces in which everything that life has inscribed upon them seems mitigated and as it were disavowed. With long strides he began to walk down the garden path. The professor could hardly keep step, for he was short and stout; his white vest was stretched tight over his round paunch, and his face was red and heated under the cinnamon-colored, stubbly whiskers. He was telling the count a remarkable dream he had had; this was his interest at present, for he intended to write a treatise on the theory of dreams, and the count was giving him the material which he too had once gathered on this subject.
Count Hamilcar always had material gathered for the books which others planned to write, but had never written one himself.
"I never knew," he was wont to say, "which one of my books to write, and so I never wrote any."
"Imagine, then," the professor was reporting, "I was at the house of my colleague Domnitz, in my dream, you know. Well, Domnitz laid both hands on my shoulders, put on a very solemn face, and said in a very deep voice, which he never has had, "Colleague, I have found the basic, original form of beauty, simply beauty-in-itself." I tell you, I felt it in all my limbs, a kind of fright or joy or emotion, I suppose, I was so near weeping. Those are sensations which we can only have in dreams. "No, really," I said, "where is it?" "There," he said and why--and showed it to me."
"He showed it to you?" asked the count, coming to a stop, "well--and how did it look?"
The professor squinted, as if to look sharply at some object. "It looked," he said, "why, it really looked quite simple, you know. A narrow white slab like the gravestones in the Jewish cemeteries, a yard high, I guess, rounded at the top, and in the curve a face: the eyes simply two points, the nose a vertical stroke, the mouth a horizontal one--that was all. What do you say to that, ha?"
"Peculiar," said the count, looking out into the garden over the professor"s head.
"Yes, but the most wonderful part of it was," continued the professor, lowering his voice as if speaking of very mysterious things, "that I at once said "Ah yes," for it was immediately obvious to me, and I knew that that was beauty-in-itself; yes, I felt as if I had really known it for a long time. How do you explain that?"
"Why, that is not easy," replied the count a little absentmindedly, still looking out into the garden.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A PORTRAIT]
Adolf Munzer
Yonder between the hollyhocks and the beds of mallow there were now signs of life. A bevy of young girls and men came down the path toward the house, light summer dresses and flannel suits and an eager whirl of voices. Now the professor also became silent and turned toward the newcomers. There were his two daughters, big girls in flaming pink batiste dresses and yellow sun-hats, both very heated. Both were laughing at once in a high, rather shrill soprano. Beside them walked Lieutenant von Rabitow of the Alexander Regiment, a little stiff-legged in his white tennis suit. The count"s two nephews, Egon and Moritz of Hohenlicht, both students, both very fair, their hair parted all the way down to their necks, had stopped midway and were sparring with their racquets. Miss Demme, the governess, was chiding and pushing fourteen-year-old Erika before her, and Erika opposed her by moving but sluggishly her thin legs in their black stockings. The two old gentlemen complacently let this wave of youthful life swirl by them.
Both smiled a little.
"Do you see, Professor, yonder is instantly obvious beauty, too, really beauty-in-itself," resumed the count, pointing to a bed full of fat dark-red "Sultan of Zanzibar" roses, beside which his seventeen-year- old daughter Billy was standing.
It was very pretty to see the girl standing there by the roses in her light-blue summer dress, her round face pink and smiling and hatless.
In the blinding sunshine her hair had a deep, warm brown like old port, and the whole picture was as richly colored as a flower-bed. Beside Billy stood Marion Bonnechose, the daughter of the French governess, who had been brought up with Billy; short and dark, with brown eyes too large for her lean, somewhat yellowish face, which were looking at Billy with watchful interest.
"Certainly," said the professor, "Countess Sibyl is indubitably very beautiful, but the beauty-in-itself in my dream was simply a semicircular white tablet."
The young people had disappeared in the house, and Billy and Marion also ran toward it, their hands full of red roses. The garden grew quiet again. The count threw his head back a little, and drew into his long white nose the scents of the late summer flowers, of ripe plums and early pears, with the expression of a _gourmet_ drinking a delicious wine. From the tennis-court a last straggler came, Boris Dangello. He walked slowly and thoughtfully with bowed head; only when he pa.s.sed the two gentlemen he saluted them and his fine pale face smiled, but his eyes kept their brooding expression, as if they did not wish to disturb their own sentimental beauty.
"Also beauty," remarked the professor. "Your nephew, Mr. von Dangello, looks unusually well."
But in this there was something that put out the count. "For a young person," he said severely, "it is not advantageous to look so well: that diverts and detracts."
"You think so," murmured the professor, "I don"t know, I have no experience in that line."