Chapter Eleven.
A Pleasant Surprise!
That winter was the dullest ever known in the little household of the Gulden Strasse, and the coldest experienced for years in Lubeck—quiet town of cold winters, situated as it is on the shores of the ice-bound Baltic!
It was such bitter, inclement weather, with the thermometer going down to zero and the snow freezing as it fell, that neither Madame Dort nor old Lorischen went out of the house more than they could help; and, as for Mouser, he lived and slept and miaow-wowed in close neighbourhood to the stove in the parlour, not even the temptation of cream inducing him to leave the protection of its enjoyable warmth. For him, the mice might ravage the cupboards below the staircase, his whilom happy hunting-ground, at their own sweet will; and the birds, rendered tame by their privations, invade the sanctity of the balcony and the window-sills, whereon at another season their lives would not be worth a moment’s purchase. He heeded them not now, nor did he, as of yore, resent the intrusion of Burgher Jans’ terrier, when that predatory animal came prowling within the widow’s tenement in company with his master, who had not entirely ceased his periodic visits, in spite of “the cold shoulder” invariably turned to him by Lorischen. Mouser wasn’t going to inconvenience himself for the best dog in Christendom; so, on the advent of the terrier, he merely hopped from the front of the stove to the top, where he frizzled his feet and fizzed at his enemy, without risking the danger of catching an influenza, as he might otherwise have done if he had sought refuge elsewhere out in the cold.
Aye, for it was cold; and many was the time, when, rubbing their tingling fingers, both the widow and Lorischen pitied the hardships to which poor Fritz was exposed in the field, almost feeling angry and ashamed at themselves for being comfortable when he had to endure so much—as they knew from all the accounts published in the newspapers of the sufferings which the invading armies had to put up with, although Fritz himself made light of his physical grievances.
At Christmas-tide they were sad enough at his absence, with the memory of the lost Eric also to make that merry-making time for others doubly miserable to them; but, on the dawn of the new year, their hopes began to brighten with the receipt of every fresh piece of news from France concerning the progress of the war.
“The end cannot be far off now,” they said to one another in mutual consolation, so as to cheer up each other’s drooping spirits. “Surely the campaign cannot last much longer!”
The last Sunday in the month came, and on this day Madame Dort and Lorischen went to the Marien Kirche to service.
Previously they had been in the habit of attending the Dom Kirche, from the fact of Eric’s liking to see, first as a child and afterwards as a growing boy, the great astronomical clock whose queer-looking eyes rolled so very curiously with the swing of the pendulum backwards and forwards each second; but, now, they went to the other house of God for a different reason. It, too, had an eccentric clock, distinguished for a procession of figures of the saints, which jerked themselves into notice each hour above the dial; still it was not that which attracted the widow there. The church was filled with large monumental figures with white, outstretching wings, that hovered out into prominence above the carvings of the old oak screens, black with age. These figures appeared as if soaring up to the roof of the chancel; and Madame Dort had a fancy, morbid it might have been, that she could pray better there, surrounded as it were by guardian angels, whose protection she invoked on behalf of her boy lost at sea, and that other, yet alive, who was “in danger, necessity,” and possibly “tribulation!”
After she and Lorischen had returned home from the Marien Kirche, the day passed quietly and melancholy away; but the next morning broke more cheerfully.
It was the 30th of January, 1871. Both the lone women at the little house in the Gulden Strasse remembered that fact well; for, on the morrow, the month from which they had expected such good tidings would be up, and if they heard nothing before its close they must needs despair.
Seeing that the morning broke bright and cheerily, with the sun shining down through the frost-laden air, making the snow on the roofs look crisper and causing the icicles from the eaves to glitter in its scintillating rays, Lorischen determined to go to market, especially as she had not been outside the doorway, except to go to church, since the previous week.
She had not much to buy, it is true; but then she might have a gossip with the neighbours and hear some news, perhaps—who knows?
Anything might have happened without the knowledge of herself or her mistress, as no one, not even Burgher Jans, had been to visit them for ever so long!
Clad, therefore, in her thick cloak and warm boots, with her wide, red-knitted woollen shawl over her head and portly market-basket on arm, Lorischen sallied out like the dove from the ark, hoping perchance to bring back with her an olive branch of comfort; while the widow sat herself down by the stove in the parlour with her needle, stitching away at some new shirts she was engaged on to renew Fritz’s wardrobe when he came back. Seeing an opportunity for taking up a comfortable position, Mouser jumped up at once into her lap as soon as the old nurse had left the room, purring away with great complacency and watching in a lazy way the movements of her busy fingers, blinking sleepily the while at the glowing fire in front of him.
Lorischen had not been gone long when Madame Dort heard her bustling back up the staircase without. She knew the old nurse’s step well; but, besides hers, she heard the tread of some one else, and then the noisy bark of a dog. A sort of altercation between two voices followed, in which the old nurse’s angry accents were plainly perceptible; and next there seemed a hurried scuffle just without the parlour door, which suddenly burst open with a clatter, and two people entered the room.
They were Lorischen and Burgher Jans, who both tried to speak together, the result being a confused jangle of tongues from which Madame Dort could learn nothing.
“I say I was first!” squeaked the Burgher in a high treble key, which he always adopted when excited beyond his usual placid mode of utterance.
“And I say it was me!” retorted the old nurse in her gruff tones, which were much more like those of a man. “What right have you to try and supplant the servant of the house, who specially went out about it, you little meddlesome teetotum, I’d like to know, hey?”
“But I was first, I say! Madame Dort—”
“Don’t listen to him, mistress,” interposed Lorischen. “I’ve just—”
“There’s news of—”
But, bang just then came Lorischen’s market-basket against the side of the little man’s head, knocking his hat off and stopping his speech abruptly; while the old nurse muttered savagely, “I wish it had been your little turnip-top of a head instead of your hat, that I do!”
“Good people! good people!” exclaimed Madame Dort, rising to her feet and dropping her needlework and Mouser—who rapidly jumped on to the top of the stove out of the reach of Burgher Jans’ terrier, which, of course, had followed his master into the parlour and at once made a dart at the cat as he tumbled on to the floor from the widow’s lap. “Pray do not make such a noise, and both speak at once! What is the matter that you are so eager to tell me—good news, I trust, Lorischen, or you would not have hurried back so soon?”
Madame Dort’s voice trembled with anxiety, and tears of suspense stood in her eyes.
“There,” said Lorischen triumphantly to the Burgher, who remained silent for the moment from the shock of the old nurse’s attack. “You see for yourself that my mistress wishes me to tell her.”
“Oh, what is it—what have you heard?” cried the widow plaintively. “Do not keep me in this agony any longer!”
And she sat down again nervously in her chair, gazing from one to the other in mute entreaty and looking as if she were going to faint.
“There now, see what you’ve done!” said Lorischen, hastening to Madame Dort’s side. “I told you what it would be if you blurted it out like that!”
Burgher Jans’ eyes grew quite wide with astonishment beneath the broad rims of his tortoise-shell spectacles, giving him more than ever the appearance of an owl.
“Peace, woman!” he exclaimed. “I—”
“Yes, that’s it, dear mistress,” interrupted the old nurse, half laughing, half crying, as she knelt down beside the widow’s chair and put her arm round her caressingly. “There’s peace proclaimed at last, and the dear young Herr will come home again to you now!”
“Peace?” repeated the widow, looking up with an anxious stare from one to the other.
“Yes, peace, most worthy lady,” said Burgher Jans pompously in his ordinary bland voice; adding immediately afterwards for Lorischen’s especial benefit—“and I was the first to tell you of it, after all.”
“Never mind,” replied that worthy, too much overpowered with emotion at the happiness of the widow to contest the point. “We both brought the glad tidings together. Madame, dearest mistress, you are glad, are you not?”
But Madame Dort was silent for the moment. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moving in earnest prayer of thankfulness to Him who had heard her prayers and granted the fervent wish of her heart at last.
“Is it really true?” she asked presently.
“Yes, well-born and most worthy lady,” replied the little fat man, whom Lorischen now allowed to speak without further interruption. “Our Bismark signed an armistice with the French at Versailles on Saturday by which Paris capitulates, the forts defending it being given over to our soldiers, and the starving city allowed to be reprovisioned by the good English, who have prepared ever so many train-loads of food to go in for the use of the population.”
“Ah, those good English!” chimed in Lorischen.
“You have reason to say that, dearest maiden,” continued the Burgher, bowing suavely to the old woman. “They subscribed, ah! more than a million thalers for this purpose in London.”
“And I suppose the war will now cease?” said Madame Dort.
“Most certainly, worthy lady,” replied Burgher Jans. “The armistice is to last for three weeks to enable the French to have an election of members to an assembly which will decide whether the contest shall go on any further; but there is no doubt, as their armies have all been defeated and their resources exhausted, that hostilities will not be again resumed. All parties are sick of fighting by this time!”
“So I should think,” exclaimed Lorischen warmly. “It has been a bloody, murdering work, that of the last six months!”
“Yes, but good for Germany,” put in the little man in his bland way.
“Humph! much good, with widows left without their husbands and children fatherless, and the stalwart sons that should have been the help of their mothers made food for French powder and the chassepot! Besides, I don’t think the German states, Meinherr,” added the old nurse more politely than she usually addressed the Burgher, “will get much of the plunder. Mark my words if Prussia does not take the lion’s share!”
“You have reason, dearest maiden,” answered the other, agreeing with his old opponent for once. “I’ve no doubt that, like the poor Bavarians who had to do the heaviest part of the fighting, we shall get only the kicks and Prussia the halfpence!”
“That’s more than likely,” said Lorischen, much pleased at the similarity of their sentiments; “and I suppose we can expect Herr Fritz home soon now, eh?”
“Probably as soon as peace is regularly established; for then, our troops will commence to evacuate France and march back to the Rhine,” replied Burgher Jans,—“that Rhine whose banks they have so valiantly defended.”
“Ah, we’d better begin at once to prepare to receive our soldier lad,” said the old nurse with much cheerfulness, as if she wished to set to without a moment’s delay at making things ready for Fritz; seeing which, Burgher Jans took his departure, the widow and Lorischen both expressing their thanks for the good news he had brought, and the old nurse actually escorting him to the door in a most unusual fit of civility!
The definite treaty of peace between France and Germany was completed on the 28th February, 1871, when it was ratified by the constituent assembly sitting at Bordeaux, the conquered country surrendering two of her richest provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, together with the fortresses of Metz and Belfort—the strongest on the frontier—besides paying an indemnity of no less a sum than five milliards of francs, some two hundred millions of pounds in English money, to the victors!
It was a terrible price to pay for the war; for, in addition to these sacrifices must be reckoned:— 2,400 captured field guns; 120 eagles, flags, and standards; 4,000 fortress guns; and 11,669 officers and 363,326 men taken prisoners in battle and interned in Germany—not counting 170,000 men of the garrison of Paris who must be held to have surrendered to their conquerors, although these were not led away captive like the others, who were kept in durance until the first moiety of their ransom was paid!
But, Prince Bismark over-reached himself in grinding down the country as he did. He thought, that, by fixing such an enormous sum for the indemnity, France would be under the heel of Germany for years to come, as the Prussian troops were not to leave until the money was paid. Instead of which, by a general and stupendous movement of her population, inflamed by a praiseworthy spirit of patriotism, the five milliards were paid within a year and the French soil clear of the invader—this being the most wonderful thing connected with the war, some persons think!
Meanwhile, Madame Dort’s anxiety to behold her son again at home and his earnest wish to the same effect had to await gratification.
The news of the armistice before Paris reached Lubeck on the 30th January; but it was not until March that the German troops began to evacuate their positions in front of the capital of France, and nearly the end of the month before the last battalion turned its face homeward.
Before that wished-for end was reached, Fritz was terribly heart-sick about Madaleine.
After a long silence, enduring for over a month, during which his mind was torn by conflicting doubts and fears, he had received a short, hurried note from her, telling him that she had been ill and was worried by domestic circumstances. She did not know what would become of her, she wrote, adding that he had better cease to think of her, although she would always pray for his welfare.
That was all; but it wasn’t a very agreeable collapse to the nice little enchanted “castle in Spain” he had been diligently building up ever since his meeting with Madaleine at Mézières:— it was a sad downfall to the hopes he had of meeting her again!
Of course, he wrote to his mother, telling her of his misery; but she could not console him much, save by exhorting him to live in hope, for that all would come well in good time.
“Old people can’t feel like young ones,” thought Fritz. “She doesn’t know what I suffer in my heart.”
And so time rolled on slowly enough for mother and son; he, counting the days—sadly now, for his return was robbed of one of its chief expectations; she, gladly, watching to clasp her firstborn in her arms once more. Ample amends she thought this would be to her for all the anxiety she had suffered since Fritz had left home the previous summer, especially after her agonised fear of losing him!
Towards the close of March, the Hanoverian regiments returned to their depôt, Fritz being forwarded on to Lubeck.
As no one knew the precise day or hour when the train bearing him home might be expected to arrive, of course there was no one specially waiting at the railway station to welcome him back. Only the ordinary curiosity-mongers amongst the townspeople were there; but these were always on the watch for new-comers. They raised a sort of cheer when he and his comrades belonging to the neighbourhood alighted from the railway carriages; but, although the cheering was hearty, and Fritz and the others joined in the popular Volkslieder that the townspeople started, the young sub-lieutenant missed his mother’s dear face and Lorischen’s friendly, wrinkled old countenance, both of whom, somehow or other without any reason to warrant the assumption, he had thought would have been there.
It was in a melancholy manner, therefore, that he took his way towards the Gulden Strasse and the little house he had not seen for so long—could it only have been barely nine months ago?
How small everything looked now, after his travels and experiences of the busy towns and handsome cities of France which he had but so lately passed through! All here seemed quiet, quaint, diminutive, old-fashioned, like the resemblance to some antique picture, or the dream city of a dream!
Presently, he is in the old familiar street of his youth. It seemed so long and wide then; now, he can traverse its length in two strides, and it is so narrow that the buildings on either side almost meet in the middle.
But, the home-coming charm is on him; love draws him forward quickly like a magnet! He sees his mother’s house at the end of the street. He is up the outside stairway with an agile bound.
With full heart, he bursts open the door, and, in a second, is within the parlour. He hears his mother’s cry of joy.
“My son, my son!” and she throws herself on his neck, as he clasps her in a fond embrace, recollecting that once he never expected to have lived to see her again.
And Lorischen, too, she comes forward with a handshake and a hug for the boy she has nursed on her knee many a time in the years agone.
But, who is this besides?
“What! Madaleine?” exclaims Fritz.
“Yes, it is I,” she replies demurely, a merry smile dancing on her face, and a glad light in the bright blue eyes.
This was the surprise Madame Dort had prepared for Fritz—a pleasant one, wasn’t it, with which to welcome him home?