The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 08. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ off from the foot-path. The smell of burning charcoal led one to him infallibly.

      How the birds are rejoicing in the trees! And beneath them a sad maiden is passing, thinking how unhappy it must make her brother to see all these things again, and how badly things must have gone with him, if he had no other resource but to come home and live upon her earnings.

      "Other sisters are helped by their brothers," she thought to herself, "and I—but I shall show you this time, Damie, that you must stay where I put you, and that you dare not stir!"

      Such were Barefoot's thoughts as she hurried along; and at last she arrived at Coaly Mathew's. But there she saw only Coaly Mathew himself, who was sitting by the kiln in front of his log cabin, and holding his wooden pipe with both hands as he smoked it; for a charcoal-burner is like a charcoal kiln, in that he is always smoking.

      "Has anybody been playing a trick on me?" Barefoot asked herself. "Oh, that would be shameful! What have I done to people that they should make a fool of me? But I shall soon find out who did it—and he shall pay for it."

      With clenched fists and a flaming face she stood before Coaly Mathew, who hardly raised his eyes to her—much less did he speak. As long as the sun was shining he was almost always mute, and only at night, when nobody could look into his eyes, did he like to talk, and then he spoke freely.

      Barefoot gazed for a minute at the charcoal-burner's black face, and then asked impatiently:

      "Where is my Damie?"

      The old man shook his head. Then Barefoot asked again with a stamp of her foot:

      "Is my Damie with you?"

      The old man unfolded his hands and spread them right and left, implying thereby that he was not there.

      "Who was it that sent to me?" asked Barefoot, still more impatiently.

      "Can't you speak?"

      The charcoal-burner pointed with his right thumb toward the side where a foot-path wound around the mountain.

      "For Heaven's sake, do say something!" cried Barefoot, fairly weeping with indignation; "only a single word! Is my Damie here, or where is he?"

      At last the old man said:

      "He's there—gone to meet you along the path." And then, as if he had said too much, he pressed his lips together and walked off around the kiln.

      Barefoot now stood there, laughing scornfully and, at the same time, sadly over her brother's simplicity.

      "He sends to me and doesn't stay in the place where I can find him; now if I go up that way, why should he expect me to come by the foot-path? That has doubtless occurred to him now, and he'll be going some other way—so that I shall never find him, and we shall be wandering about each other as in a fog."

      Barefoot sat down quietly on the stump of a tree. There was a fire within her as within the kiln, only the flames could not leap forth—the fire could merely smolder within. The birds were singing, the forest rustling—but what is all that when there is no clear, responsive note in the heart? Barefoot now remembered, as in a dream, how she had once cherished thoughts of love. What right had she to let such thoughts rise within her? Had she not misery enough in herself and in her brother? And this thought of love seemed to her now like the remembrance, in winter, of a bright summer's day. One merely remembers how sunny and warm it was—but that is all. Now she had to learn what it meant to "wait,"—to "wait" high up on a crag, where there is hardly a palm's breadth of room. And he who knows what it means, feels all his old misery—and more.

      She went into the charcoal-burner's log cabin, and there lay a cloth sack, hardly half full, and on the sack was her father's name.

      "Oh, how you have been dragged about!" she said, almost aloud. But she soon got over her excitement in her curiosity to see what Damie had brought back. "He must at least still have the shirts that I made for him out of Black Marianne's linen. And perhaps there is also a present from our uncle in America in it. But if he had anything good, would he have gone first to Coaly Mathew in the forest? Would he not have shown himself in the village at once?"

      Barefoot had plenty of time to indulge in these reflections; for the sack had been tied with a cord, which had been knotted in a most complicated way, and it required all her patience and skill to disentangle it. She emptied out everything that was in the sack and said with angry eyes:

      "Oh, you good-for-nothing! There's not a decent shirt left! Now you may have your choice whether you'll be called 'Jack in Tatters' or 'Tattered Jack.'"

      This was not a happy frame of mind in which to greet her brother for the first time. And Damie seemed to realize this; for he stood at the entrance of the log cabin and looked on, until Barefoot had put everything back into the sack. Then he stepped up to her and said:

      "God greet you, Amrei! I bring you nothing but dirty clothes, but you are neat, and will make me—"

      "Oh, dear Damie, how you look!" cried Barefoot, and she threw herself on his neck. But she quickly tore herself away from him, exclaiming:

      "For Heaven's sake! You smell of whisky! Have you got so far already?"

      "No, Coaly Mathew only gave me a little juniper spirit, for I could not stand up any longer. Things have gone badly with me, but I have not taken to drink—you may believe that, though, to be sure, I can't prove it."

      "I believe you, for you surely would not wish to deceive the only one you have on earth! But oh, how wild and miserable you look! You have a beard as heavy as a knife-grinder's. I won't allow that—you must shave it off. But you're in good health? There's nothing the matter with you?"

      "I am in good health, and intend to be a soldier."

      "What you are, and what you are to be, we'll think about in good time.

      But now tell me how things have gone with you."

      Damie kicked his foot against a half-burnt log of wood—one of the spoilt logs, as they were called—and said:

      "Look you—I am just like that, not completely turned to coal, and yet no longer fresh wood."

      Barefoot exhorted him to say what he had to say without complaints. And then Damie went off into a long, long story, setting forth how he had not been able to bear the life at his uncle's, and how hard-hearted and selfish that uncle was, and especially how his wife had grudged him every bit he ate in the house, and how he had got work here and there, but how in every place he had only experienced a little more of man's hard-heartedness. "In America," he said, "one can see another person perishing in misery, and never so much as look around at him."

      Barefoot could hardly help laughing when there came again and again, as the burden of his story,—"And then they turned me out into the street." She could not help interrupting him with:

      "Yes, that's just how you are, and how you used to be, even as a child. When you once stumbled, you let yourself fall like a log of wood; one must convert the stumble into a hop, as the old proverb says. Cheer up. Do you know what one must do, when people try to hurt one?"

      "One must keep out of their way."

      "No, one must hurt them, if one can—and one hurts them most by standing up and achieving something. But you always stand there and say to the world: 'Do what you like to me, good or bad; kiss me or beat me, just as you will.' That's easy enough; you let people do anything to you, and then pity yourself. СКАЧАТЬ