GRETCHEN'S DAY
Gretchen was always up when the morning was rosy, when the trees were still dark and motionless, and the beads of dew white and frostlike. For what is better than to meet the day as it comes over the mountains, and silence breaks here and there, in the houses and streets, in the fields and the vineyards? Let old age, which has played its part and taken to the wings of the stage, let old age loiter in the morning, but not green years. Gretchen awoke as the birds awoke, with snatches and little trills of song. To her nearest neighbors there was about her that which reminded them of the regularity of a good clock; when they heard her voice they knew it was time to get up.
She was always busy in the morning. The tinkle of the bell outside brought her to the door, and her two goats came pattering in to be relieved of their creamy burden. Gretchen was fond of them; they needed no care at all. The moment she had milked them they went tinkling off to the steep pastures.
Even in midsummer the dawn was chill in Dreiberg. She blew on her fingers. The fire was down to the last ember; so she went into the cluttered courtyard and broke into pieces one of the limbs she had carried up from the valley earlier in the season. The fire renewed its cheerful crackle, the kettle boiled briskly, and the frugal breakfast was under way.
There was daily one cup of coffee, but neither Gretchen nor her grandmother claimed this luxury; it was for the sick woman on the third floor. Sometimes at the Black Eagle she had a cup when her work was done, but to Gretchen the aroma excelled the taste. Her grandmother's breakfast and her own out of the way, she carried the coffee and bread and a hot brick up to the invalid. The woman gave her two crowns a week to serve this morning meal. Gretchen would have cheerfully done the work for nothing.
What the character of the woman's illness was Gretchen hadn't an idea, but there could be no doubt that she was ill, desperately, had the goose-girl but known it. Her face was thin and the bones were visible under the drum-like skin; her hands were merely claws. But she would have no doctor; she would have no care save that which Gretchen gave her. Sometimes she remained in bed all the day. She had been out of the house but once since she came. She mystified the girl, for she never complained, never asked questions, talked but little, and always smiled kindly when the pillow was freshened.
"Good morning, Fräu," said Gretchen.
"Good morning, Liebchen."
"I have brought you a brick this morning, for it will be cold till the sun is high."
"Thank you."
Gretchen pulled the deal table to the side of the cot, poured out the coffee, and buttered the bread.
"I ought not to drink coffee, but it is the only thing that warms me. You have been very patient with me."
"I am glad to help you."
"And that is why I love you. Now, I have some instructions to give you this morning. Presently I shall be leaving, and there will be something besides crowns."
"You are thinking of leaving?"
"Yes. When I go I shall not come back. Under my pillow there is an envelope. You will find it and keep it."
Gretchen, young and healthy, touched not this melancholy undercurrent. She accepted the words at their surface value. She knew nothing about death except by hearsay.
"You will promise to take it?"
"Yes, Fräu."
"Thanks, little gosling. I have an errand for you this morning. It will take you to the palace."
"To the palace?" echoed Gretchen.
"Yes. Does that frighten you?"
"No, Fräu; it only surprises me. What shall I do?"
"You will seek her highness and give her this note."
"The princess?" Gretchen sadly viewed her wooden shoes and roughened hands.
"Never mind your hands and feet; your face will open any gate or door for you."
"I have never been to the palace. Will they not laugh and turn me out?"
"If they try that, demand to see his excellency, Count von Herbeck, and say that you came from forty Krumerweg."
Gretchen shuddered with a mixture of apprehension and delight. To meet and speak to all these great ones!
"And if I can not get in?"
"You will have no trouble. Be sure, though, to give the note to no one but her highness. There will be no answer. All I ask is that when you return you will tell me if you were successful. You may go."
Gretchen put the note away and went down-stairs. She decked her beautiful head with a little white cap, which she wore only on Sundays and at the opera, and braided and beribboned her hair. It never occurred to her that there was anything unusual in the incident. It was only when she came out into the König Strasse that the puzzle of it came to her forcibly. Who was this old woman who thought nothing of writing a letter to her serene highness? And who were her nocturnal visitors? Gretchen had no patience with puzzles, so she let her mind revel in the thought that she was to see and speak to the princess whom she admired and revered. What luck! How smoothly the world was beginning to run!
Being of a discerning mind, she idled about the Platz till after nine, for it had been told to her that the great sleep rather late in the morning. What should she say to her serene highness? What kind of a curtsy should she make? These and a hundred other questions flitted through her head. At least she would wear no humble, servile air. For Gretchen was a bit of a socialist. Did not Herr Goldberg, whom the police detested, did he not say that all men were equal? And surely this sweeping statement included women! She attended secret meetings in the damp cellar of the Black Eagle, and, while she laughed at some of the articles in the propaganda, she received seriously enough that which proclaimed her the equal of any one. So long as she obeyed nature's laws and Heaven's, was she not indeed the equal of queens and princesses, who, it was said, did not always obey these laws?
With a confidence born of right and innocence, she proceeded toward the east or side gates of the palace. The sentry smiled at her.
"I have a letter for her serene highness," she said.
"Leave it."
"I am under orders to give it to her highness herself."
"Good day, then!" laughed the soldier. "You can not enter the gardens without a permit."
Gretchen remembered. "Will you send some one to his excellency the chancellor and tell him I have come from number forty Krumerweg?"
"Krumerweg? The very name ought to close any gate. But, girl, are you speaking truthfully?"
Gretchen exhibited the note. He scratched his chin, perplexed.
"Run along. If they ask me, I'll say that I didn't see you." The sentry resumed his beat.
Gretchen stepped inside the gates, and the real beauty of the gardens was revealed to her for the first time. Strange flowers she had never seen before, plants with great broad leaves, grass-like carpet, and giant ferns, unlike anything she had plucked in the valleys and the mountains. It was all a fairy-land. There were marble urns with hanging vines, and marble statues. She loitered in this pebbled path and that, forgetful of her errand. Even had her mind been filled with the importance of it, she did not know where to go to find the proper entrance.
A hand grasped her rudely by the arm.
"What are you doing here?" thundered the head gardener. "Be off with you! Don't you know that no one is allowed in here without a permit?"
Gretchen wrenched free her arm. She was angry.
"How dare you touch me like that?"
Something in her glance, which was singularly arrogant, cooled even the warm-blooded Hermann.
"But you live in Dreiberg and ought to know."
"You could have told me without bruising my arm," defiantly.
"I am sorry if I hurt you, but you ought to have known better. By which sentry did you pass?" for there was that about her beauty which made him suspicious regarding the sentry's imperviousness to it.
"Hermann!"
Gretchen and the head gardener whirled. Through a hedge which divided the formal gardens from the tennis and archery grounds came a young woman in riding-habit. She carried a book in one hand and a riding-whip in the other.
"What is the trouble, Hermann?" she inquired. "Your voice was something high."
"Your Highness, this young woman here had the impudence to walk into the gardens and stroll about as nice as you please," indignantly.
"Has she stolen any flowers or trod on any of the beds?"
"Why, no, your Highness; but—"
"What is the harm, then?"
"But it is not customary, your Highness. If we permitted this on the part of the people, the gardens would be ruined in a week."
"We, you and I, Hermann," said her highness, with a smile that won Gretchen on the spot, "we will overlook this first offense. Perhaps this young lady had some errand and lost her way."
"Yes, Highness," replied Gretchen eagerly.
"Your highness alone with—"
"Go at once," kindly, but with royal firmness.
Hermann bowed, gathered up his pruning knives and scissors which he had let fall, and stalked down the path. What was it? he wondered. She was a princess in all things save her lack of coldness toward the people. It was wrong to meet them in this way, it was not in order. Her highness had lived too long among them. She would never rid herself of the idea that the humble had hearts and minds like the exalted.
As the figure of the head gardener diminished and shortly vanished behind a bed of palms, her highness laughed brightly, and Gretchen, to her own surprise, found herself laughing also, easily and without constraint.
"Whom were you seeking?" her highness asked, rather startled by the undeniable beauty of this peasant.
"I was seeking your serene highness. I live at number forty the Krumerweg, and the sick woman gave me this note for you."
"Krumerweg?" Her highness reached for the note and read it, and as she read tears gathered in her eyes. "Follow me," she said. She led Gretchen to a marble bench and sat down. Gretchen remained on her feet respectfully. "What is your name?"
