Walda: A Novel

by Mary Holland Kinkaid

“Take him away,” commanded the Herr Doktor.

“Thou knowest I permit no rats in the gasthaus cellar,” said Mother Werther, shaking her head indignantly at Karl Weisel; and edging up to Hans Peter, she bent low to whisper: “Thou shalt have the best supper I can carry to thee.”

“Verily, even Mother Werther appears to be encouraging sedition in Zanah,” remarked Karl Weisel, pointing to the innkeeper’s wife with a backward movement of his thumb.

“If there is sedition in Zanah, it is thou that sowest discontent.” Mother Werther put her arms on her broad hips, and looked at him for a moment with such contempt in her kindly face that the head of the thirteen elders slunk aside to a chair behind the high counter.

“I will take Hans Peter to the potato-bin, and he shall have a clean straw tick to lie on,” she said. “Come, Hans Peter.”

Mother Werther put a hand on the simple one’s shoulder and walked out into the kitchen with him. Presently they were heard descending the stairs, and then their voices sounded from the distant place of imprisonment.

It was late that night when Everett returned to the inn after a walk far a-field. At supper-time he had asked about Hans Peter, but he had learned nothing of the whereabouts of the simple one. He had a faint idea that he ought to search for the fool, but his thoughts were absorbed by Walda. He spoke to Diedrich Werther, who dozed in an arm-chair, and the landlord slowly lighted a tall tallow dip and passed it to Everett. He lingered to ask whether any message had come from Wilhelm Kellar. The landlord replied that the school-master had stopped to ask for the stranger in Zanah, but it was nothing urgent, for Gerson Brandt had told how fast Wilhelm Kellar was gaining strength.

Everett stumbled along the dark, narrow passage that led to his room. A draught blew out his candle, which he did not relight. Feeling his way to his bed, he threw himself down upon it and tried to think what course was wisest for him to pursue in winning Walda. He was not blind to the many obstacles between them, but he was a man who was accustomed to obtain what he coveted, and he admitted no thought of defeat. He wanted Walda with all the intensity of a strong nature. He knew now that he loved her, and he felt that she was his by right of that claim. A sense of his own unworthiness haunted him when he thought of her innocence and her unworldliness, but there had been born in him a new spirit that consumed all his old desires. He knew that even if he could make the prophetess of Zanah love him, it would be impossible for him to persuade her to leave the colony as long as her father lived. He felt a hot wave of shame every time he realized that if love came to Walda it would bring her only dishonor before her people. Whenever this view of the end of his wooing presented itself, he resolutely refused to face it. He listened to the cry of his heart. He loved the woman of Zanah; he coveted her for his wife.

Women are happy to enshrine love in their hearts even when it must burn in a vestal flame, but men are not content unless they can carry it as a torch from which to light the fires in the hearts of those whom they would make their own. Women can kneel before the embers of a great passion and be grateful, even though it must burn out before it can reach their own hearth-stones; men would snatch the holy fire at any cost. Everett had slowly reached the point where he had deliberately determined to make Walda love him. He had eased his conscience by the plea that it was a crime for a woman of such rare beauty to be buried in the colony. He was sure he could make her happy in the world that held so much for him. He could reason himself into the belief that he was saving her from a wasted life. Yet, with all his reasoning, he could not see how he was to obtain her consent to marry him and to go away with him. Still, he hugged to his heart the belief that fate would befriend him, and he resolved not to look beyond the one great aim of making Walda love him.

He could not sleep. The thoughts that had harassed him, since suddenly he had come to know Walda had all his love, disturbed him as he lay on the high bed. He stared at the window, which afforded glimpses of a starlit sky between the leaves and branches of a tree that had become black in the night. Day was breaking before he began to feel drowsy. Finally he fell into a deep slumber that was not disturbed until the sun was high in the heavens. He was awakened by a remittent pounding, the sound of which came from the front of the inn. He went to the latticed window, whence he could see that several men were building something in the village square. He made a hasty toilet in his primitive dressing-room, where two buckets of water and a wooden wash-tub were provided for his bath. The cold water refreshed him, but he still had a sense of depression.