[CHAPTER VI. SAINT WOLFGANG.]
The morning is lovely beyond expression. The heat of the sun is great; but a gentle wind cools the air. Birds never sang more loud and clear. The flowers, too, on the window-sill, and on the table, rose, geranium, and the delicate crimson cactus, are all so beautiful, that we think the German poet right, when he calls the flowers "stars in the firmament of the earth." Out of doors all is quiet. Opposite the window stands the village schoolhouse. There are two parasite trees, with their outspread branches nailed against the white walls, like the wings of culprit kites. There the rods grow. Under them, on a bench at the door, sit school-girls; and barefoot urchins in breeches are spelling out their lessons. The clock strikestwelve, and one by one they disappear, and go into the hive, like bees at the sound of a brass pan. At the door of the next house sits a poor woman, knitting in the shade; and in front of her is an aqueduct pouring its cool, clear water into a rough wooden trough. A travelling carriage without horses, stands at the inn-door, and a postilion in red jacket is talking with a blacksmith, who wears blue woollen stockings and a leather apron. Beyond is a stable, and still further a cluster of houses and the village church. They are repairing the belfry and the bulbous steeple. A little farther, over the roofs of the houses, you can see Saint Wolfgang's Lake. Water so bright and beautiful hardly flows elsewhere. Green, and blue, and silver-white run into each other, with almost imperceptible change, like the streaks on the sides of a mackerel. And above are the pinnacles of the mountains; some bald, and rocky, and cone-shaped, and others bold, and broad, and dark with pines.
Such was the scene, which Paul Flemming beheldfrom his window a few mornings after Berkley's departure. The quiet of the place had soothed him. He had become more calm. His heart complained less loudly in the holy village silence, as we are wont to lower our voices when those around us speak in whispers. He began to feel at times an interest in the lowly things around him. The face of the landscape pleased him, but more than this the face of the poor woman who sat knitting in the shade. It was a pale, meek countenance, with more delicacy in its features than is usual among peasantry. It wore also an expression of patient suffering. As he was looking at her, a deformed child came out of the door and hung upon her knees. She caressed him affectionately. It was her child; in whom she beheld her own fair features distorted and hardly to be recognised, as one sometimes sees his face reflected from the bowl of a spoon.
The child's deformity and the mother's tenderness interested the feelings of Flemming. The landlady told him something of the poor woman's history. She was the widow of a blacksmith, who had died soon after their marriage. But she survived to become a mother, just as, in oaks, immediately after fecundation, the male flower fades and falls, while the female continues and ripens into perfect fruit. Alas! her child was deformed. Yet she looked upon him with eyes of maternal fondness and pity, loving him still more for his deformity. And in her heart she said, as the Mexicans say to their new-born offspring, "Child, thou art come into the world to suffer. Endure, and hold thy peace." Though poor, she was not entirely destitute; for her husband had left her, beside the deformed child, a life estate in a tomb in the churchyard of Saint Gilgen. During the week she labored for other people, and on Sundays for herself, by going to church and reading the Bible. On one of the blank leaves she had recorded the day of her birth, and that of her child's, likewise her marriage and her husband's death. Thus she lived, poor, patient and resigned. Her heart was a passion-flower, bearing within it the crown of thorns and the cross of Christ. Her ideas of Heaven were few and simple. She rejected the doctrine that it was a place of constant activity, and not of repose, and believed, that, when she at length reached it, she should work no more, but sit always in a clean white apron, and sing psalms.
As Flemming sat meditating on these things, he paid new homage in his heart to the beauty and excellence of the female character. He thought of the absent and the dead; and said, with tears in his eyes;
"Shall I thank God for the green Summer, and the mild air, and the flowers, and the stars, and all that makes this world so beautiful, and not for the good and beautiful beings I have known in it? Has not their presence been sweeter to me than flowers? Are they not higher and holier than the stars? Are they not more to me than all things else?"
Thus the morning passed away in musings; andin the afternoon, when Flemming was preparing to go down to the lake, as his custom was, a carriage drew up before the door, and, to his great astonishment, out jumped Berkley. The first thing he did was to give the Postmaster, who stood near the door, a smart cut with his whip. The sufferer gently expostulated, saying,
"Pray, Sir, don't; I am lame."
Whereupon Berkley desisted, and began instead to shake the Postmaster's wife by the shoulders, and order his dinner in English. But all this was done so good-naturedly, and with such a rosy, laughing face, that no offence was taken.
"So you have returned much sooner than you intended;" said Flemming, after the first friendly salutations.