Miss Grantley's Girls, and the Stories She Told Them

by Thomas Archer

O we will hang up the Polichinello that thy dear father sent thee from afar, little Loisl; for who knows but thou and Heinrich, and I, thy mother, may see him yet before the eve of Christmas, and while the snow is on the ground. We will keep the tree here, near the window, and should he come not, we will light it afresh every night that it may shine a welcome to the dear father, and keep our hearts alive with hope."

This is what I heard my dear mistress say when it wanted yet a week to Christmas in the year 1871, and the master, her husband, was still there with the Crown Prince before Paris along with his regiment. He was ober-lieutenant, one of many going to fight against France, and ever since the beginning, till after Sedan, after Domremy, after Metz, had been with his men in the camp, and wherever there was much danger always in the front. It was wonder to me how I had come to learn all about the war and the campaign, but girl as I was (Lisba is but a child even now, my dear mistress would say), I also had one dear to me—with the Red Prince and the army before Orleans.

Herr postmaster Schwartz—ah! he came to talk to my mistress and to bring letters to her from her brave husband, and I was sewing, or busy in the room, and heard all—as he would stay in the kitchen on his way out and tell us all about it—Bertha and me; and once he handed me a letter.

Oh! how my hand trembled as I took it; how the Herr postmaster looked at me through his horn spectacles and watched me, for he knew the writing! it was his son's, the writing of Franz. And I felt the blood rush up hot to my face, and the tears blind me as I placed in my bodice the little letter that I dare not open while there were questioning eyes to ask: "What is he to thee, Lisba, and what says he?"

Bertha knew. Bertha was yet more of a child than I, for she was two years younger, but old was she in sentiment, and too often we would talk together far into the night, but in whispers lest we should wake the little ones, for Bertha slept next the great nursery, where our mistress had also made her bed, and I would steal into her room to pore over the map that the Herr postmaster had drawn with his pencil in the kitchen to show where our armies had been, and where the cruel battles were fought. In Alsace and to Lorraine, by Neiderbronn, at Weissenburg, at Woërth, at Saarbruck, at Metz, at Sedan, "where," said Herr postmaster, "we have received the sword of the Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who is now our prisoner in the Palace of the Habichtswald."

Then—ah! me, to think that they should be taken to the end of the world—right into France, to Donchery, to Chalons. As near as Strasbourg, as far as Rheims, and then on to Paris—or near it—at the place called Nogent-sur-Marne; that is where our dear master, the ober-lieutenant, was with the army of the Crown Prince; and we grieved and waited, for he had had a wound, we heard, though now he was healed. And the fighting went on, though hundreds of our brave men of the troops—the landwehr, the reserve—were hurt, or maimed, or killed. And many women wept over their knitting or their spinning; and the coming of the holy Christmas time brought not peace, though the Herr postmaster said the hungry war was now nearly over, but its jaws were not yet done clinking, and would yet gnash many to death.

Franz! ah! he was with the Red Prince at Orleans, where they had fought the French army of the Loire. Nor did Franz go alone, for there went with him his best friend, his dutz brüder, Hofer, from Esmansdorff, whither Franz had gone three years before to follow his trade of cask-cooper and wheelwright, and there met Hofer, whose family were of the Tyrolese Protestants that came from Zitterthal to find a refuge in our land.

He came to Saueichenwald, to our village, this Hofer—a dark well-looking man—not fair like Franz, nor with his broad chest and clear blue eyes—but tall and quick, with crisp curling hair, and long fingers. I have told him that he had hawk's eyes, for he could see the birds on the trees, and if he had pleased, could have shot them with his rifle, so far was his sight, so true his aim; but he hated to kill or hurt any living thing, and loved best to play the fiddle when he was not at work in his tan-yard. Yet now, he too was gone to the war, and was in the midst of the slaying and burning. When first he came home with Franz to Saueichenwald, I was afraid, for though I loved him not, but loved Franz only, his eyes were ever fixed on me, and he came often to the homestead; even when Franz came not he would be there in the yellow sunshine of the autumn evening by the gate that led to the apple orchard, or at the wicket, where Bertha and I used to stand after coming from the dairy or the hen-house; nor was he unwelcome to the master, who wondered at his shooting and leaping with a pole; nor to the dear mistress, for whom he brought a work-box, all of beautifully carved wood; nor to the little ones, Loisl and Heinrich, to whom he played the fiddle, and whom he taught to dance or showed how the chamois is hunted.

Often when I have stood with Bertha—for we always went together—at the gate, he would come with his keen bright laugh and hawk's eyes, and leap the wall that inclosed the dairy yard. Franz, too, had noticed how he sought us, and one red evening when we were crossing the orchard, and Hofer walked between us with an arm about each, Franz came in by the old path from the wood on the other side, and stood there looking still and grieved. Laughing ever, Hofer carried us both in to where Franz stood, and with his long arms still about us caught him with a hand on each wrist, and so stood we, two girls in the midst of two men's encircling arms.

"Hof, is it that thou lov'st Lisba?" said Frank sternly; "if so, thou doest not well."