Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

by Berthold Auerbach

CHAPTER XII.

WHAT IS STIRRING BY NIGHT.

The roses in the garden, and in the youth's soul, all opened during the night.

To Eric! Roland's open mouth would have said, but no sound was uttered, he said it only to himself. It was a clear starlight-night, the waning moon, in its third quarter, hung in the heavens, giving a soft light, and Roland was penetrated with such a feeling of gladness, that he often threw out his arms, as if they were wings with which he could easily fly. He went at a quick pace, as if he were pursued; he heard steps behind him, and stopped; it was only the echo of his own footsteps.

At a distance a group of men, standing still, were waiting for him. He came nearer; they were wooden posts, painted black, intended to fence in a vineyard. He moderated his pace, and would have sung, but he feared to betray himself by any sound. He stood still upon an elevation, and heard far below upon the river the wheezy puffing of a tow-boat; he saw the lights upon the masts of the boats in tow, and they moved along so wonderfully! He counted them, and there were seven.

"They are also awake," he said to himself, and it occurred to him, for the first time, that people were obliged to be awake, and to labor at night to earn their living, as the engineers there on the tow-boat, the helmsmen, and the boatmen on the boats in tow.

Why is this? What forces men to this? The boy angrily shook his head. Why did this trouble him? He walked on over the high level plain, and then ascended a hill behind it. He took a childlike pleasure that his shadow accompanied him. He kept always the middle of the road; the ditches by the wayside looked dismal and haunted. He was startled at the shadows which the trees cast in the light of the moon, and was glad when he came where it was clear and bright. When he drew near to a village, he felt secure, for although everybody was asleep, yet he was in the midst of human beings. The boy had been told that, by night, thieves and murderers go about on all the roads to rob and to murder. What did he have about him for them to rob? His watch and chain. He took out his watch, wanting to conceal it.

"For shame!" he suddenly cried. He became conscious how afraid he was in the depth of his soul; he would not be afraid. He boldly summoned up the dangers which he wanted to encounter, rejoiced over them, and cried aloud,—

"Come on! Here am I, and here is Devil too! Isn't it so, Devil? Just let them come on!" he said to the dog caressingly. The dog leaped up to him.

He passed through a village. All were asleep, except that here and there a dog barked, scenting Devil's proximity. Roland ordered him to be quiet, and he obeyed. The boy recognized the village as the one where he had been with the doctor and Eric on Sunday: here was the house where the man had died; here on the opposite side was the gymnastic ground, where he had exercised with Eric. At last he came to the house of Sevenpiper, where the entire orchestra were now asleep. He stood awhile, considering whether he should not wake up some one in the house, either to go with him, or to be sent to his father. He rejected both suggestions and went on.

The night was perfectly still; the only sound was the occasional barking of a dog at a distance, as if disturbed in his sleep. A brook rippled by the wayside, and he was glad to hear its strange sound; it went as if chatting with him for a while, and then disappeared, and all was silent. He passed through a ravine, where it was so dark from the high trees on both sides that he could not see the path; quietly composing himself, he went forward, thinking how beautiful it must be there in the clear daylight. He emerged from the ravine, and was rejoiced to be in the highway again. Over the ridge of a mountain shone a star, so large, so brilliant, always, going up higher, and gleaming so brightly! Does Manna know what star this is?

There was a light in the first house of a village; he stopped. He heard voices. The woman inside was mourning and lamenting, that, on the morrow, her only cow was to be sold. Taking his resolution quickly, Roland placed several gold pieces upon the window-sill of the lower room, and knocked on the window-pane, crying,—

"You people! there is, some money for the cow upon the sill."

He ran breathlessly away, a sort of trouble coming over him, as if he were a thief; he did not stop until he had gone some distance, crouching down in a ditch. He could not tell why he had run from there. As he now lay there and hearkened whether the people followed him, he laughed merrily to himself, to think that it must seem to them to have been some spirit that goes about healing men's sorrows, and making them grateful. No one came. He went on vigorously, happy in the thought of what he had done, and thinking that when he had a great deal of money—as he would have at some time—he would go about secretly in the world, and thus make everybody happy wherever his footsteps went.

When he fixed his gaze again upon the path, he saw a strange-looking man in the field by the wayside, who was aiming a gun directly at him. Roland, trembling, stood still, and asked the man what he wanted; the man did not move. Roland set the dog upon him, and the dog came back, shaking his head. Roland went up to the form, and laughed and trembled at the same time, to find that it was nothing but a scarecrow.

A wagon, groaning under its heavy load, came nearer and nearer. It was a strange creaking and clattering, as the wagon swayed upon its axle, and the wheels grated upon and crushed the stones. Roland came to the conclusion that the wagon had only two wheels, and was drawn by one horse. He kept still, in order to determine this, and then he heard the sound of several hoofs. He awaited the approach of the wagon, and saw that there were two horses harnessed tandem to a wagon with only two wheels. Roland went on one side, and waited for the wagon to go by; the driver walked near it, whistling and cracking his whip. Roland walked on, keeping at a little distance behind the wagon. A fearfulness had taken possession of the youthful wanderer by night, and now he felt himself near a human being who was awake; if any danger threatened he could call upon him. "Yes," he said inwardly to himself, "this is how I would call out,—

"'Help! help!'"

But no danger presented itself. And he said to his dog, as if in derision,—

"Shame that nobody assails us, to give us both a chance to show how courageous we are."

But he was terrified when all at once he heard nothing more of the wagon; it had stopped at the toll-gate. When it again creaked he was in good spirits once more. The wagon halted at the first house of the next village. The hostler, who seemed to have been expecting the driver, was not a little amazed to see, by the light of the lantern which he had with him, a handsome boy with sparkling eyes. "Hi! who may this be?" the servant cried, leaving his mouth wide open with astonishment and terror, for the great dog sniffed about his legs, then placed himself in front of the terrified fellow, showing all his teeth, and blinking back to his master, as if waiting for the watchword, "Seize him!"

Roland ordered the dog to come away. There must have been something in his voice that produced a feeling of respect in the driver and in the servant.

They asked him whether he would not also take a drink. Roland said yes. And he sat now at table, touching glasses with the teamster by the light of a solitary oil lamp. The servant was inquisitive, and said with a smirk, pointing to Roland's delicate hand,—

"That's a splendid finger-ring; how that stone does shine! That is worth ever so much, isn't it? You! make me a present of that."

The landlord, in the sleeping-room adjoining, hearing this, came in, ghostlike, in his shirt and drawers. Roland was now asked who he was, whence he came, and where he was going. He gave an evasive answer.

The teamster left, and Roland, keeping by his side, listened to the narration of his way of life. He learned that the wagon was loaded with new stone bottles, which were carried to a neighboring mineral-spring, and thence were sent into all the world, even as far as Holland. Roland was astonished to find how many kinds of occupation were requisite, before the mineral-water was drunk at his father's table. For the teamster, Holland was the end of the world; he was amazed when Roland told him that there were many countries, even whole divisions of the earth, much farther off than Holland. The teamster was surprised at Roland's extensive knowledge, and inquired if he had ever been so far away.

Roland gave an indirect reply. And now the teamster told him that he himself was an honest fellow, that he had earned by hard work everything which he had upon his back, and he would go hungry and beg, before he would get anything by dishonest means. He advised Roland, if he had done anything which made him afraid of being punished—if perhaps he had stolen the ring—he had better return and give everything up. Roland set the man at rest.

The road led through a small forest of handsome oak-trees. The screeching of an owl was heard, Sounding like a mocking laugh.

"Thank God," said the teamster, "that you are with me; did you hear that laugh?"

"That is no laugh, that was a screech-owl."

"Yes, screech-owl—that's the laughing spirit."

"The laughing-spirit? Tell me what that is."

"Yes; my mother heard it once in broad daylight, when she was just a little girl. The children were at one time out there in the wood, to get acorns. You perhaps know that they shake down the acorns and place a white cloth under the tree, and catch them in that; it makes the best food for hogs. Well, the children are in the woods on a fine afternoon in autumn, the boys get up into the tree and shake down the acorns, and there is such a rattling! Then they hear, all at once, in the thicket a loud laugh. 'What is that?'—'O,' says my mother, 'that is a spirit.' 'What!' says a saucy fellow there, 'if it's a spirit, then I will just for once take a look at him.' He goes into the thicket, and when he once gets into the thicket, there sits a mighty little dwarf upon a tree-stump; his head is almost bigger than his whole body, he is gray all over, and he has a long gray beard. And the boy asks, 'Is't you that laughed so?' 'Nobody else,' says the dwarf, and laughs once more, exactly as before. 'You have shaken down the acorns, but there is one fallen down under the cloth, deep into the moss, that you will not find, and out of that acorn will grow up a tree, and when it is large enough it will be cut down, and out of one part of the boards a cradle wilt be made, and out of the other part a door, and a child will be laid in the cradle, and when that child shall open that door for the first time, I shall be released. Until that time I must wander about, because I have been a forest-trespasser, and lived on dishonest means.' The little dwarf laughs again, and then vanishes into the tree-stump Since then he's been heard many a time, but nobody's seen him again. Everybody knows the oak-tree in the forest, but no one disturbs it."

Roland shuddered. He did not believe in the story, but he gave attention while the teamster continued to relate to him how hard it was to get rid of possessions dishonestly acquired.

Gradually it began to be twilight. Roland extended his hand to the teamster, and bade him good-bye, as he wished to stay here and wait awhile. The teamster seated himself upon the wagon-shafts, and fixed himself comfortably, as it was now day, and he could doze a little.

The boy sat down upon a pile of stones, gazing into vacancy, and listening to the gradual dying away in the distance of the rattling and creaking wagon. For the first time in his life, he represented to himself in imagination the way in which a human being lives. He saw, as in a dream, the teamster arriving at his place of destination, he saw him lying in the shed upon the bundle of hay which he afterwards threw to his horses.

Roland had never yet been so alone, so without attendance, so conscious that no one could call to him; it seemed that he now saw, for the first time, the world and all that is in it. He followed the path of a little beetle, which crept swiftly along the ground and scrambled up a stalk.

Incomprehensible thoughts were stirring in his youthful spirit. What an infinite fulness of existence is the world! In the hedges of wild roses, just opening their buds by the roadside, sat motionless beetles and insects of all kinds, and a great buzzing and humming came from one open flower-cup to another. Here had beetles, butterflies, flies, and spiders spent the night, and the well-roofed snails were quietly housed upon the twigs.

He saw a field-mouse come out of its hole; first it remained resting upon the edge, listening, looking round, moving its chaps, and finally it slipped out, and quickly disappeared into another hole among the grass. A variegated beetle, in the early morning, ran across the field-path, fearing the public road, and feeling perfectly safe only among the thicket of the grain.

A hare ran out, and Devil sprang after him; Roland involuntarily felt at his side to seize hold of his gun.

As if emerging from beneath the surface of an overwhelming flood of impressions, Roland rose up. The sun had risen; he could not endure its splendor, and with eyes fixed upon the ground he went on. But his step lagged, for a voice spoke in him:—

"Turn back to father and mother!" But suddenly he cried aloud,—

"Eric!"

"Eric!" was repeated again in multiple echoes, and Roland walked on now, as if called by the mountains themselves. It seemed to him, not as if he walked, but as if he were lifted up and carried along. The night without sleep, the wine, all that he had experienced, excited his imagination, and it seemed as if he must now meet with something which no one else had ever met with—something inexpressible, incomprehensible, miraculous. He looked round, expecting to see it; something must certainly come to him and say, "For thee have I waited; art thou here at last?" And as he thus looked round, he noticed that the dog had left him. The wood yonder was near, the dog had evidently run after a hare or a wild rabbit. Roland whistled, he wished to call aloud, "Devil! Devil!" but he did not utter the word. He called the old name, "Griffin!" The dog bounded towards him, his tongue lolling from his mouth; he was wet with the dew of the corn-field through which he had run. Roland found it difficult to keep the dog off, for he seemed perfectly happy to have his name again; he looked up intelligently, panting quickly.

"Yes, your name is Griffin!" Roland cried to him. "Now down!" The dog kept close to his feet.

As the road now led through the forest, Roland turned aside, and laid himself down on the moss under a fir-tree; the birds sang over his head, and the cuckoo called. The dog sat near him, and seemed almost jealous that Roland did not vouchsafe him a single glance. Roland parted his jaws, and took delight in the magnificent teeth; then he said,—his own hunger might have made him think of it,—

"The next place we come to where there's a butcher, you shall have a sausage."

The dog licked his chaps, jumped round and round as if he understood the words, chased the crows which were that early looking for their food in the field, and barked at the rising sun.

The tired boy was soon asleep; the dog placed himself by his side, but he knew his duty, and did not lie down; he remained sitting, and resisted sleep. Occasionally he winked, however, as if it were hard work to keep his weary eyes open; then he shook his head, and kept faithful watch by his master. Suddenly Roland awoke. A child's voice awakened him.