THE HOSIER
"The greatest sorrow of all down here,
Is to lose the one we hold most dear."
Sometimes, when I have wandered far out on the wide heath, where I have had nothing but the brown heather around me and the blue sky above me; when I walked far away from mankind and the monuments of its busy doings here below,--which after all are only molehills to be leveled by time or by some restless Tamerlane;--when I drifted, light-hearted, free, and proud, like the Bedouin, whom no house, no narrowly bounded field chains to the spot, but who owns, possesses, all he sees,--who does not dwell, but who goes wherever he pleases; when my far-hovering eye caught a glimpse of a house in the horizon, and was thus disagreeably arrested in its airy flight, sometimes there came (God forgive me this passing thought, it was no more than that) the wish--would that this dwelling of man were not! there too is trouble and sorrow; there too they quarrel and fight about mine and thine!--Oh! the happy desert is mine, is thine, is everybody's, is nobody's.--It is said that a forester has proposed to disturb the settlements, to plant forests on the fields of the peasants and in place of their torn-down villages; the far more inhuman thought has taken possession of me at times--what if the heather-grown heath were still here the same as it was centuries ago, undisturbed, untouched by the hand of man! But as I have said, I did not mean it seriously. For when tired and weary, suffering from hunger and thirst, I thought longingly of the Arab's tent and coffee-pot, I thanked God that a heather-thatched roof--be it even miles away--promised me shelter and refreshment.
On a still, warm September day, several years ago, I found myself walking on this same heath, which, Arabically speaking, I call mine. No wind stirred the blushing heather; the air was heavy and misty with heat. The far-off hills that limited the horizon seemed to hover like clouds around the immense plain, and took many wonderful shapes: houses, towers, castles, men and animals; but all of dark uncertain outline, changing like dream pictures; now a cottage grew into a church, and that in turn into a pyramid; here a spire arose, there another sank; a man became a horse, and this in turn an elephant; here floated a boat, there a ship with all sails set.
My eye found its pleasure for quite a while in watching these fantastic figures--a panorama which only the sailor and the desert-dweller have occasion to enjoy--when finally I began to look for a real house among the many false ones; I wanted right ardently to exchange all my beautiful fairy palaces for a single human cottage.
Success was mine; I soon discovered a real farm without spires and towers, whose outlines became distincter and sharper the nearer I came to it, and which, flanked by peat-stacks, looked much larger than it really was. Its inmates were unknown to me. Their clothes were poor, their furniture simple, but I knew that the heath-dweller often hides noble rental in an unpainted box or in a miserable wardrobe, and a fat pocketbook inside a patched coat; when therefore my eyes fell on an alcove packed full of stockings, I concluded, and quite rightly, that I was in the house of a rich hosier. (In parenthesis it may be said that I do not know any poor ones.)
A middle-aged, gray-haired, but still strong man rose from his slice and offered me his hand with these words: "Welcome!--with permission to ask, where does the good friend come from?"
Do not jeer at so ill-mannered and straightforward a question! the heath peasant is quite as hospitable as the Scotch laird, and but a little more curious; after all, he cannot be blamed for wanting to know who his guest is.
When I had told him who I was and whence I came, he called his wife, who immediately put all the delicacies of the house before me and begged me insistently, with good-hearted kindness, to eat and drink, although my hunger and thirst made all insistence unnecessary.
I was in the midst of the repast and a political talk with my host, when a young and exceedingly beautiful peasant girl came in, whom I should undoubtedly have declared a lady who had fled from cruel parents and an unwished-for marriage, had not her red hands and unadulterated peasant dialect convinced me that no disguise had taken place. She nodded in a friendly way, cast a passing glance under the table, went out and came in soon again with a dish of milk and water, which she put down on the floor with the words, "Your dog may need something too."
I thanked her for her attention; but this was fully given to the big dog, whose greediness soon made the dish empty, and who now in his way thanked the giver by rubbing himself up against her; and when she raised her arms, a little intimidated, Chasseur misunderstood the movement, put himself on the alert, and forced the screaming girl backwards toward the alcove. I called the dog back and explained his good intentions.
I would not have invited the reader's attention to so trivial a matter, but to remark that everything is becoming to the beautiful; for indeed this peasant girl showed, in everything she said and did, a certain natural grace which could not be called coquetry unless you will so call an innate unconscious instinct.
When she had left the room I asked the parents if this was their daughter. They answered in the affirmative, adding that she was an only child.
"You won't keep her very long," I said.
"Dear me, what do you mean by that?" asked the father; but a pleased smile showed that he understood my meaning.
"I think," I answered, "that she will hardly lack suitors."
"Hm!" grumbled he, "of suitors we can get a plenty; but if they are worth anything, that is the question. To go a-wooing with a watch and a silver-mounted pipe does not set the matter straight; it takes more to ride than to say 'Get up!' Sure as I live," he went on, putting both clenched hands on the table and bending to look out of the low window, "if there is not one of them--a shepherd's boy just out of the heather--oh yes, one of these customers' who run about with a couple of dozen hose in a wallet--stupid dog! wooes our daughter with two oxen and two cows and a half--yes, I am on to him!--Beggar!"
All this was not addressed to me, but to the new-comer, on whom he fastened his darkened eyes as the other came along the heather path toward the house. The lad was still far enough away to allow me time to ask my host about him, and I learned that he was the son of the nearest neighbor--who, by the way,