“Jörn Uhl,” by Gustav Frenssen.
I can deal more briefly with “Jörn Uhl,” the well-known rural romance of Frenssen, in which the sketch of a moon walker constitutes merely an episode. Joern Uhl, who, returned from the war, takes over the farm of his unfortunate father, discovers Lena Tarn as the head maid-servant. She pleased him at first sight. “She was large and strong and stately in her walk. Besides her face was fresh with color, white and red, her hair golden and slightly wavy. He thought he had never seen so fresh and at the same time so goodly appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said ‘good evening’ and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness.” She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! “She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech.” It is noteworthy too that she talks to herself in unquiet sleep.
Lena Tarn can soon make observations also upon her side. Joern was very short with the old graybeard, who advised him to an early marriage: “The housekeeper is with me, I do not need a wife.” Lena, entering just then, heard what the unmannerly countryman said and assumed a proud look, thinking to herself, “What is the sly old man saying!” Since however the old man began to talk and compelled her and Joern Uhl to listen, she was concerned almost entirely for the latter, whose “long, quiet face with its deep discerning eyes she observed with a silent wonder, without shyness, but with confident curiosity.” Not alone in the kitchen, which is under her control, can Lena show what is in her. When a young bull broke loose and came after the women, she met him with sparkling eyes, “Stop you wretch!” When he would not allow himself to be turned aside, she threw a swift look flashing with anger upon the men, who were idly looking on, then swung the three-legged milking stool which she had taken along and hit the bull so forcibly on the head with it that frightened, he lunged off sideways. “Lena Tarn had however all afternoon a red glow coming and going in her cheeks because the farmer had looked upon her with the eyes of a high and mighty young man. That caused her secretly both joy and concern.” Immediately after this she experienced one satisfaction. Joern Uhl was dragged into the water by a mischievous calf and was much worse cut up by it than she, the weaker one, the woman had been.
“Lena saw always before her the face which Joern Uhl had made when she had gone forward against the bull. She was otherwise in the best of humors, but when, as in the last few days, she was not quite well physically she was inclined to be angry. She preserved a gloomy countenance as well and as long as she could. Soon though, as she went here and there about her work and felt the new fresh health streaming through her limbs, she altered her looks.… Joern Uhl moreover could not be quiet that day. The sudden plunge in the water had brought his blood to boiling. The spring sunshine did its part. A holiday spirit came over him and he thought that he would go into the village and pay his taxes, which were due. On the way he thought of Lena Tarn. Her hair is coiled upon her head like a helmet of burnished brass, which slips into her neck. When she ‘does things,’ as she says, her eyes are stern and directed eagerly upon her work. When on the other hand she is spoken to and speaks with any one she is quick to laugh. Work seems to her the only field where quiet earnestness is in place. ‘That must be so,’ she says. Toward everything else she is angry or in a good humor, mostly the latter. Only toward me is she short and often spiteful. It has been a great joke for her that I had the ill luck to have to go into the water with that stupid beast. If she only dared she would spread it three times a day on my bread and butter and say ‘There you have it.’”
Now he meets old Dreier who gives him good advice: “How old are you? Twenty-four? Don't you marry, Joern. On no account. That would be the stupidest thing that you could do. I bet you $50.000 you don't dare do it. Time will tell, I say.” “Take it for granted that I will wait yet ten years,” he answered. And he went on thinking to himself, “It is pleasanter to go thus alone and let one's thoughts run on. Marry? Marry now? I will be on my guard. After I am thirty!” Then his thought came back to Lena. “She looked well as she flung the stool at the bull. Prancing like a three-year-old horse. Yesterday she did not look so well, her eyes were not so bright, she spoke harshly to Wieten (the old housekeeper) and said to her afterwards, ‘Do not mind it, Wieten, I slept badly,’ and laughed. Funny thing, slept badly? When one is on the go as she must be all day, one should sleep like a log. But that is all right in the May days. It is well that men understand this, otherwise every spring the world would go all to pieces.” Then he rejoiced that he was so young and could point out on the farm what was his. “Later, when the years have gone by and I am well established I will take to myself a fine wife with money and golden hair. There are also rich girls who are as merry and fresh and as desirable and have as stately forms. It need not be just this one.”
Then he came to the parish clerk who had just been notified that day of six children to be baptized and who was complaining of the increase in births. Joern agreed with him: “What will we come to, if the folk increase like that? Marrying before twenty-five must simply be forbidden.” “With these words he departed, filled with a proud consciousness that he was of the same opinion with so intelligent, experienced an old man as the parish clerk.” At home he met Lena Tarn with an old farmer, who came to inquire after the fate of his son who had been with Joern in the war. Then for the first time the girl heard of the frightful misery and the suffering of the soldiers which cried to heaven, so that her face was drawn with pain. “Deep in her soul however thrilled and laughed a secret joy, that you have come back whole, Joern Uhl.”
Later, when she was making out the butter account with the farmer, “she had to bend her glowing head over the book, which he held in his hand. There came such a glistening in his eyes that he wrinkled his forehead and did not conceal his displeasure at such an unsteady flashing.” In the evening she came to get back the book. Then Joern spoke to her, “You have not been in a good humor these last days. Is anything the matter?” She threw her head back and said shortly, “Something is the matter sometimes with one; but it soon passes over.”—“As I came through the passage yesterday evening I heard you call out in your sleep in your room.” “Oh, well!… I have not been well.”—“What … you not well? The moon has done that. It has been shining into your room.”—“I say, though, there may be some other cause for that.”—“I say that comes from the moon.” She looked at him angrily, “As if you knew everything! I did not call out in my sleep at all but was wide awake. Three calves had broken out and were frisking around in the grass. I saw them clearly in the moonlight. I called them.” He laughed mockingly, “Those certainly were moon calves.” “So? I believe not. For I brought them in myself this morning and then I saw that the stable door stood open. I thought to myself, the boy has gone courting tonight. Your eyes always sweep over everything and light upon everything and you [du] worry so over everything out of order, I wonder that you [du] have not seen it.”—“You say ‘thou’ [du] to me?”—“Yes, you say it to me. I am almost as great as you and you are not a count, and I am as intelligent as you.” She carried her head pretty high and as she snatched the book from the window seat as if it lay there in the fire, he saw the splendid scorn in her eyes. “Take care of yourself when the moon is shining,” he said, “otherwise again tonight you will have to guard the calves.”
“He had arisen, but dared not touch her. They looked at one another however and each knew how it stood with the other. He had again the look which he had revealed once in the morning, a presuming look, confident of victory, such a look as if he would say, ‘I know well enough how such a maidenly scorn is to be interpreted.’ But her eyes said, ‘I am too proud to love you.’ She went slowly into the darkness of her room as if she would give him time yet to say something or to long after her. He was however too slow for that and laughed in confusion.”
The night fell upon them, a wonderful still night. “I will take one more look at the moon,” thought Joern Uhl and took his telescope. He went through the middle door with as little noise as possible, but the door of Lena's room stood open and she appeared upon the threshold and leaned against the side post. “Are you still awake?” he asked anxiously. “It is not yet late.”—“The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once more. If you wish you may come with me.” At first she remained standing, then he heard her coming after him. When he had directed his telescope to a nebulous star he invited her to look in. She placed herself so awkwardly that he laid his hand on her shoulder and asked her, “What do you see?”—“Oh!” she said, “I see—I see—a large farmhouse, which is burning. It has a thatched roof. Oh!—Everything is burning; the roof is all in flames. Sparks are flying about. It is really an old Ditmarsh farmhouse.”—“No, my girl, you have too much imagination, which is bad for science.—What else do you see?”—“I see—I see—at one side of the farmhouse a plank which is dark; for the burning house is behind it. But I can look deep into the burning hall. Three, four sheaves have fallen from the loft and lie burning on the blazing floor. Oh, how frightful that is! Show me another house which is not burning.—Show me a house, you know, show me a farmyard just where they are who hunt up the calves.” He laughed merrily. “You huzzy,” said he, “you might well see your three-legged stool in the sky, not? So, high overhead!”—“You should have had the three-legged stool. I do not forget you that day, you … and how you looked at me. That you may believe.”
He had never yet let anyone share in his observations. Now he marveled and was pleased at her astonishment and joy. And then he showed her the moon. He placed her and held her again by the arm as if she were an awkward child. She was astonished at the masses on it: “What are those? Boiling things, like in our copper kettles? Exactly. What if it hung brightly scoured over our fireplace and tomorrow morning the fire shone up upon it.”—“The boiling things are mountains and valleys.—And now you have seen enough and spoken wisely enough. Go inside. You will be cold and then you will dream again and see in the dream I do not know what. Will you be able to sleep?”—“I will try.” He wanted again to reach out his hand to her but his high respect for her held him back. He thought he should not grasp her thus, along the way as it were. “Make haste,” he said, “to get away.”