In the Year '13: A Tale of Mecklenburg Life

by Fritz Reuter

CHAPTER XV.

How the Colonel was obliged to turn away at Fieka's words, and Fieka at Heinrich's. Why the Herr Rathsherr cursed all thin people; and the Miller wished he were a crow.

When Fieka and Heinrich arrived at the Windmill-hill, she looked round on all sides, and, in a few moments, caught sight of her father as he sat with his companions under the mill-shed.

"There's my father," said she to Heinrich.

"Well, then," he replied, "we'll turn up here to the right of the pass, towards the ploughed field. It will be hard work; but there's no getting through 'Breakneck.' We shall get to the mill this way, and you can speak to your father then."

"Stop," cried Fieka, "don't turn up to the right towards the mill; turn down to the left, away from it; I don't want to speak to him.--Look there now! He has seen us; he's making signs to us!"

"Fieka," said Heinrich, doing as she told him, "what are you doing this for? Why do you want to get out of your father's way?"

"Because I can't help him till I have given the Colonel the letter. Who knows, how the French might take it, if I spoke to him? There might be some dispute, and if we were taken before the Colonel so, it's not likely he would look on us with much favour. And then too, why should I be holding out hopes to my old father, when they are so far off? It's enough for the moment that he knows we are near him."

The cannon were now gradually got out of their bed of mud, and the procession began to move on once more. The prisoners were led along one side of the pass; and Heinrich drove along the other--as well as he could over old Nahmaker's ploughed field. Fieka looked out for the Colonel.

"I shall know him again when I see him," she said to Heinrich. "He has a kind face for all that it looked hard when he commanded them to take the Burmeister."

Thus talking, they passed by the cannon and many a knot of French plodding heavily through the deep mud. At last, close to the sign of the "Bremsenkranz" they saw the Colonel on horseback slowly making his way onwards, side by side with some of his officers.--

"Drive on a little way past them, Heinrich," said Fieka, "and stop at the edge of the bank, and I will get down."

This was done. As the Colonel approached, Fieka stood in the foot-path in his way, advanced a couple of steps towards him and said--"Herr, I have a letter for you."

The Colonel stopped, took the letter, and looked at Fieka, rather astonished: "From whom is it, my child?"

"From our Herr Amtshauptmann Weber."

The Colonel broke the seal and read; his face gradually softened with pity; but when he had finished reading, he silently shook his head. Fieka had watched him with the greatest anxiety; she read the answer to the letter in his face; and when he so sorrowfully shook his head, the tears started to her eyes: "Sir, it is my old father, and I am his only child," she cried.

She might have said anything in the world,--the finest speech or the most beautiful text from the Bible,--nothing would have made so deep an impression upon the strong man as these few words in the Platt-Deutsch tongue. He too had an old father and was his only child. His father lived in a high castle in Westphalia; but in loneliness,--discontented with his countrymen and his country. Time and the world had rolled many a stone between father and son, until a broad wall had grown up between them, above which it was only with difficulty that they could understand one another. Discord and dissension had arisen, and where they are, conscience makes its voice heard in quiet hours. How often had this inner voice said to him: "It is your old father, and you are his only child!" Happiness and misery, the thunder of the cannon and the roar of battle had, indeed, at times been able to overpower it; but the wound in his heart always opened afresh like the indelible blood-stain reappearing on a room-floor. Now, for the first time, did he hear these words uttered by stranger lips,--for the first time in the language of his childhood. It seemed to him as if there were no longer any reproach contained in them; they were spoken so gently, they sounded as softly in his ears as if they were words of forgiveness; and, when he saw the poor girl standing there before him with her pale, anxious face, it was too much for him,--he was obliged to turn away, and it was some time before he could speak to her again. At last he recovered himself, and said to her with all the warmth of manner which such a moment calls forth: "My dear child, it is not in my power to set your father free; but he will be soon. You and your love to him shall not, however, have appealed to me in vain; you shall stay near him, and he can go in the waggon with you. And when we get to Brandenburg, come and speak to me again."

Thereupon he gave the necessary orders, and rode on with the other officers.

Heinrich now approached a little nearer with his waggon, jumped down, and asked: "How has it gone, Fieka?--But I need not ask you that. You look as if your heart were on your tongue; he has set your father free, has he not?" And he put his arm round her: "Come, Fieka, get up into the waggon, here's a lot of Frenchmen coming,--we must get out of their way."

"They won't hurt us," said Fieka, mounting higher up the bank and looking along the road. "He hasn't set him free, but he's promised that he will. I am to stay near father, and all the prisoners are to come in our waggon; and, Heinrich; you can go home now to the mill and help mother."

Heinrich made the reins fast to a willow-tree, and bent down to buckle some strap in the harness, and then patted and stroked the smooth glossy neck of the near side-horse.--

"You are right, Heinrich," said Fieka, "you do not like to leave your horses and waggon behind you; but old Inspector Bräsig will take them back for you,--he will willingly do us that favour."

"Fieka, I was not thinking about the horses and waggon," said Heinrich, "I was thinking about you and what the old Herr Amtshauptmann said to me."

"What was that?" she asked.

"If I let a hair of your head be touched, I was never to dare appear before his eyes again. And, Fieka, I promised him I would stay by you at all times, and when I made him that promise," and he went up to her and took her hand in his, and looked earnestly into her eyes--"there were two present listening, though no one knew it, but I alone; Fieka, they were--God, and my own heart."

Fieka blushed red as a rose, but when he put his arm round her, she gently freed herself from his embrace and said--

"Not here, Heinrich!--Not to-day, Heinrich!--Good heavens, why there is my old father!"

So saying, she left him, and went to meet her father; and Heinrich stood there like a tree in the winter-time when the green leaves have all fallen off, and the birds no longer sing of love and joy in its branches. But when she turned round; came back to him again, cried: "Heinrich, Heinrich," and the tears welled up into her eyes; and then hastily set off again towards her father, leaf after leaf burst forth, and songs of joy and love sounded in the air, and spring arose in his heart, the Spring of Love,--the only Spring which can, through a whole lifetime, survive summer's heat, and autumn's storms and winter's cold;--can survive, if the Spring be real; the life true.

"Why, Fieka," cried old Miller Voss, "where do you come from?" And when Fieka threw herself on his neck, and told him all about it, with the tears standing in her eyes, the old man scolded her, and said that Heinrich could have come alone quite well, and these were affairs with which women should not meddle. But Rathsherr Herse declared that the Miller understood nothing whatever about such matters, and that Fieka's idea about the waggon was so good, he could not have thought of a better one himself; for his patent-leather boots had been made by Bank the shoemaker expressly for the Council-Chamber, and not for four miles of the Mecklenburg roads at this time of year. And when baker Witte heard of the basket of sausages and milk-rolls, he patted himself on the stomach and said that Fieka was his "dear god-child," and that though he was one of those people who carry a good provision-chest inside them, yet circumstances alter a case, and in weather like this "the best oven must sometimes have extra fuel."

The French sergeant had now brought the Colonel's orders to the guard, and the company mounted into the waggon, and made themselves as warm and comfortable as they could. My uncle Herse appropriated to himself the wraps intended for my father, because as his colleague he had the next best right to them; and he swore at lean-bodied people in general, and my father in particular. About height, he said, he would say nothing, for that was a thing which no one could give or take away from himself, but every reasonable man could in time obtain the proper amount of breadth.

"Look here, Meister Witte, this is supposed to be a coat for a full and well-grown man!" And so saying, he held up my Father's coat in the air, as a public spectacle.

"Herr Rathsherr," said baker Witte, "put your arms through the sleeves with the coat hind part before, so that the Burmeister's back-piece comes upon your breast; and here is another coat, which I'll hang over your back for you, and so we shall make one good coat out of two little ones; 'necessity is the mother of invention!'"

Well, this was done, and my uncle Herse looked like a fine fat oyster, sent on a long journey; behind and before he had a firm shell, but at the sides it gaped open from time to time. Baker Witte had got a silk cloak that had belonged to his late wife, and he put it on with the rabbit-skin lining outside, because he said the rain would spoil the silk, but it could not hurt the skin, for as far as he knew, rabbits always ran about with the furry side of their skin turned outwards.

The dressing-up of these two went on pretty quickly; but with the Miller it was a long affair, for when he heard that the great-coat with the seven capes which was intended for him, belonged to the Herr Amtshauptmann, he was first of all overwhelmed with respect and made bow after bow to it, as if the old gentleman were standing before him and wished him to enter first; and then he was overcome with feeling at the idea of the Amtshauptmann having thought of him in his trouble, and said he was not worthy of it; and when Fieka had got one sleeve on, the thought struck him that he might be taken for some one of high rank.

"And, neighbour," he turned to Witte, "supposing I were to begin to speak now, and the ass's ears were to show above the seven capes!"

"Yes, neighbour," replied the baker, "you're right there; you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; but you can hold your tongue;--or else speak High German. You can, you know."

"Yes, I can--after a fashion," said the Miller, and seated himself on the foremost sack.

They were now all seated except Heinrich.

"Why, Heinrich," said Miller Voss, "there's surely room for you on your own waggon! Come a little nearer, Fieka, and make room for your cousin."

But Heinrich would not have it so; he put the horse-cloth round Fieka's feet, and said he would walk on in front. This he did, now jumping over a ditch and then back again, and always keeping where he could watch Fieka's face.

"Herr Rathsherr," said the Miller, "that's my cousin, Joe Voss's son, he's a fine fellow, isn't he?"

And Rathsherr Herse said: "That he is, Miller, he's a handsome young fellow."

And baker Witte said: "He's a jolly fellow."

Fieka said nothing, but she thought to herself: "He's a good and faithful fellow," and she might perhaps have gone on thinking about him; but all at once Heinrich was at her side, looking at her lovingly, and asking whether she were not cold. Thinking was of course at an end now, and she gave him her hand: "Just feel how warm I am."

Witte now dived into the sausage-and-roll basket, and gave everyone his share; and, on hearing the Herr Rathsherr praise the milk-rolls, the old baker said to himself: "Now look at the fellow! And yet he goes and buys his bread of Guhle; but an owl is a bird, when you have got no other."

The Herr Rathsherr leant over towards the baker and whispered in his ear: "Look, Meister Witte, there is the 'Bremsenkranz' Inn just before us; and if the minions of the Corsican monster have a trace of human feeling left in them, they won't mind our getting a drop to wash down our rolls with." But while saying this, he had neglected his bread, and had let it and the sausage dangle a little over the side of the waggon. All at once he felt a slight tug at his fingers, and on his looking round he beheld one of the Corsican's "minions" quietly biting into his sausage and roll, and as he was about to lift his voice up against such a manifest act of pillage, another of the Frenchmen put his arm over the back of the waggon and seized the whole basket.

"Confound it!" cried my uncle Herse, "I did not think that things had come to such a pass as this."

Old Witte burst out afresh with a "cursed thieves;" and the Miller, who was driving, so thoroughly forgot his position, wrapped up as he was in the Amtshauptmann's warm overcoat, that he raised his whip, and was just going to lay it about the Frenchmen's shoulders, when Fieka caught him by the arm:

"For God's sake, father, what are you doing?"

"Hm--yes--" said the Miller, recollecting himself, "you are right again, Fieka," and he turned to the Frenchmen: "Don't take it ill, I did not mean anything."

Well, they evidently were not going to take it ill at all, for they ate away at the rolls and sausages with such apparent relish, that the Herr Rathsherr was filled with spleen and gall. And now the whole party became once more conscious of their position, which they had for a time forgotten in the warmth and comfort of the waggon. They drove thus towards Brandenburg far into the grey evening, and where the basket of rolls had stood, were now only sorrow and care and thought, which whispered into their ears all manner of dreadful stories; and once, when a flight of crows passed over them, my uncle Herse said:

"Yes, you can laugh--you have no cares."

And the baker said: "No, and they pay no taxes and no duties." And the Miller sighed and said: "I wish I were a crow."

But in two hearts care found no place; love had entered into them with its princely company of Secret Wishes and Hope and Trust; and the Secret Wishes flew through the whole household of the heart and into all its recesses, like active bridesmaids,--pushed aside all that stood in the way, and wiped the dust from table and chair, and cleaned the windows, so that one could see far out into the beautiful country called Life; and they spread the table in the bright room, and made the bed in the quiet room, and hung fresh garlands of flowers and evergreens over windows and door, and beautiful pictures on the walls. And Hope lit her thousand wax-lights, and then sat down quietly in a corner as if it had not been at all she who had done this, but her step-sister, Reality. And Trust stood at the door and let no one in who had not on a wedding-garment; and she said to Care, when she asked after Fieka: "Begone, the old Miller will dance at her wedding;" and to Doubt, when she asked after Heinrich: "Go thy way, it is all right."