It was, namely, information that the Ambassador in Paris had received and imparted through all the higher and lower officers, till the news reached the village, “That John Winkler, of Holdenbrunn, had fallen, fighting at one of the outposts in Algiers.”
It was talked of in the village, and every one said how strange that so many high officers should trouble themselves about the dead John; and concluded that so certain a stream of information must be true. In the sitting of the council, it was resolved to say nothing to Brown Mariann. It was unjust to imbitter the few years she had to live, by taking from her her last consolation.
But, instead of keeping the information secret, the Mayor hastened to tattle it out at home, and the whole village, all but Mariann, were soon in possession of the news. Every one observed her with strange glances—they were afraid they should betray themselves—they scarcely returned her greetings.
It would have been better if Amrie also had known nothing; but there lay a peculiarly seducing charm in coming as near as possible to the forbidden subject, and of course everybody spoke with Amrie of the melancholy occurrence, warned her to say nothing of it to Mariann, and asked “whether the mother had had no warning, no dream? Were there no strange voices in the house?”
Amrie was full of secret trembling and fear. She alone was near Mariann, and knew something that she must conceal from her. The people, also, of whom she hired a small apartment, kept themselves out of her neighborhood, and signified their compassion by giving her warning to quit.
How strangely in life things are connected together. Through this occurrence Amrie experienced both joy and sorrow; for the parental house was again opened to them. Mariann moved into it. Amrie, although in the beginning full of fear, accustomed herself to go in and out; and, when she had kindled the fire, and drawn the water, she believed her father and mother must come again. At last she felt herself wholly at home. She spun day and night, till she earned enough to re-purchase from Mathew the cuckoo clock which had belonged to her parents. She was now too happy to possess a piece of her old domestic furniture. But the cuckoo had suffered among strangers, had lost half of his voice, and the other half remained buried in his throat. He could only say “cuck,” and as often as he did that, Amrie at first added, unconsciously, the other “coo,” but she complained of that half-tone, and especially that it was not so beautiful as in her early childhood. Then said Mariann,—
“Who knows, that if in later years we should receive again what has made us perfectly happy in childhood, I believe that, like the cuckoo clock, it would have but half its sound. If I could only teach thee, child, what cost me so much till I had learnt it—never to wish for what happened yesterday. That, can no one give. We may try to purchase it, through sweat and tears shaken together! It can be found in no apothecary’s shop. Cling to nothing, Amrie—to no man—to no cause—then canst thou fly alone!”
These speeches of Mariann were at the same time wild and timid. They came out only in the twilight, like wild animals from the forest. It was only with difficulty that Amrie accustomed herself to her misanthropy.
Mariann could not endure the half-word repeating of the clock, and hung the pendulum wholly outside so that the clock merely ticked, and no longer gave out the hour. At length the ticking alone disturbed her, so that at last the poor clock was no longer wound up. She said she had always a clock in her head. It was wonderful, that although time was very indifferent to her, she always knew the hour to an exact minute. There was a singular wakefulness in her, watching and listening as she always was for news of her son, and although she visited no one, and spoke to no one, yet she knew every thing that took place in the village,—even the most secret things that occurred. She guessed every thing from the manner in which people met her, and from scattered words; and, as this appeared miraculous, she was feared and avoided. From one end of the year to the other, she ate daily some juniper-berries. It was said that was the reason she was so active, and that she would never see her sixty-sixth year, for no one would believe that even now both sixes belonged to her age. They said she milked her black goats, hours long, that gave her indeed much milk, and she willingly milked these only. She detested milk drawn from the udder of cows. It was called witchcraft that she succeeded always in rearing fowls, for where could she find food for them, and how could she always have eggs and chickens to sell? They saw her, indeed, in summer, collect May-bugs, grasshoppers, and all kinds of worms; and in moonless nights she was observed darting like a will-o’-the-wisp among the graves with a resin torch, collecting the rain-worms, and talking in a low voice with herself. Yes, it was said, that in the quiet winter nights, alone by herself, she held wonderful conversations with her goat and her hens.
Amrie often trembled, in the long quiet winter nights, when she sat solitary, spinning by Mariann, and heard nothing but the half-sleeping cluck of the fowls, and the convulsive starts of the goat; for it appeared like witchcraft that Mariann spun so quickly. “Yes,” she once said, “I think my John helps me spin”—and yet she complained that this winter, for the first time, she could not always be thinking of her John. She reproached herself on this account, and said, she was a bad mother, for it seemed to her that the features of her son vanished by degrees, and as though she forgot what he had done here and there; how he smiled; how he sang and wept; how he had climbed the trees, and sprung over the hedges.