Flights of pigeons wheel around it, hens are scratching and picking up what they can under the fences, the cock takes his stand majestically2 on the low garden wall, and sounds the réveillée, or the retreat, for the echoes of Falberg to repeat; an outside staircase, with its wooden banisters, the linen3 of the little household hanging over it, leads to the first story, and a vine climbs up the front, and spreads its leafy branches from side to side.
If you will only go up these steps you will see at the end of the narrow entry the kitchen, with its dresser and its pewter plates and dishes, its soup-tureens puffing4 out like balloons; open the door to the right and you are in the parlour with its dark oak furniture, a ceiling crossed by brown smoke-stained rafters, and its old Nuremberg clock click-clacking monotonously6.
Here sits a woman of five-and-thirty, spinning and dreaming, her waist encircled with a long black taffety bodice, and her head covered with a velvet7 headdress, with long ribbons.
A man in broad-skirted velveteen coat, with breeches of the same, and with a fine open brow, looking calm and thoughtful, is dandling on his knee a fine stout8 boy, whistling the call to "boot and saddle."
There lies the quiet village at the end of the valley, framed, as you sit, in the little cottage window; the river is leaping over the mill-dam and crossing the winding9 street; the old houses, with their deep and gloomy eaves, their barns, their gabled windows, their nets drying in the sun; the young girls, kneeling by the river-side on the stones, washing linen; the cattle lazily lounging down to drink, and gravely lowing amidst the willows10; the young herdsmen cracking their whips; the mountain summit, jagged like a saw by the pointed11 fir-tree tops—all these rural objects lie reflected in the flowing blue stream, only broken by the fleets of ducks sailing down or the occasional passage of an old tree rooted up on the mountain-side.
Looking quietly on these things, you are impressed with a sense of the ease and comfort of which they speak, and you are moved with gratitude12 to the Giver of all good.
Well, my dear friends and neighbours, such was the cottage of the Brémers in 1820, such were Brémer himself, his wife Catherine, and their son, little Fritz.
To my own mind they come back exactly as I have described them to you.
Christian13 Brémer had served in the chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. After 1815 he had married Catherine, his old sweetheart, grown a little older, but quite fresh and fair, and full of grace. With his own little property, his house, and his four or five acres of vineyard, and Catherine's added to it, Brémer had become one of the most substantial bourgeois14 of Dosenheim; he might have been mayor, or adjoint, or municipal councillor, but these honours had no attractions for him; and what pleased him best was, after work was over, to take down his old gun, whistle for Friedland, and take him a turn in the woods.
Now it fell out one day that this worthy15 man, coming home after a day's shooting, brought in his bag a little gipsy girl two or three years old, as lively as a squirrel, and as brown as a hazel-nut. He had found her in the bundle of an unhappy gipsy woman who had died of fatigue16 or hunger, or both, at the foot of a tree.
You may well imagine what an outcry Catherine raised against this new uninvited member of her family. But as Brémer was master in his own house, he simply announced to his wife that the child should be christened by the name of Susanna Frederica Myrtle, and that she should be brought up with little Fritz.
As a matter of course, all the women in the place, old and young, came to pass their observations upon the little gipsy, whose serious and thoughtful expression of countenance17 surprised them.
"This is not a child like others," said they; "she is a heathen—quite a heathen! You may see by her eyes that she understands every word! She is listening now! Mind what I say, Maître Christian! Gipsies have claws at the ends of their fingers. If you will rear young ferrets and weasels you must not expect your poultry18 to be safe. They will have the run of all the farm-yard!"
"Go and mind your own business!" shouted Brémer. "I have seen Russians and Spaniards, I have seen Italians, and Germans, and Jews; some were brown, and some were black, some white, and others red; some had long noses, and others had turned-down noses, but I found good fellows amongst them all."
"Very likely," said the ladies, "but those people lived in houses, and gipsies live in the open air."
He vouchsafed19 no reply to this argument, but with all possible politeness he put them out by the shoulders.
"Go away," he cried; "I don't want your advice. It is time to air the rooms, and then I have to go and attend to the stables."
But, after all, the rejected counsels were not so bad, as the event unhappily showed a dozen or fourteen years afterwards.
Fritz was always delighted to feed the cattle, and take the horses to the pond, and follow his father and learn to plough and sow, to reap and mow20, to tie up the sheaves and bring them home. But Myrtle had no wish to milk the cows, churn the butter, shell peas, or peel potatoes.
When the maidens21 of Dosenheim, going out to wash clothes in the morning at the river, called her the heathen, she mirrored herself complacently22 in the fountain, and when she had admired her own long dark tresses, her violet lips, her white teeth, her necklace of red berries, she would smile and murmur23 to herself—
"Ah! they only call me a heathen because I am prettier than they are," and she would dip the tip of her little foot in the fountain and laugh.
But Catherine could not approve of such conduct, and said—
"Myrtle is not the least good to us. She won't do a single thing that is useful. It is no use for me to preach, and advise, and scold, she does everything the wrong way. The other day, when we were stowing away apples in the closet, she took bites out of the best to see if they were ripe! She has no pleasure but in gobbling up the best of everything."
Brémer himself could not help admitting that there was a very heathenish spirit in her when he heard his wife crying from morning till night, "Myrtle, Myrtle! where are you now? Ah, naughty, bad girl! she has run away into the woods again to gather blackberries." But still he laughed to himself, and pitied poor Catherine, whom he compared to a hen with a brood of ducklings.
Every year after harvest-time Fritz and Myrtle spent whole days far away from the farm, pasturing the cattle, singing, and whistling, and baking potatoes under the ashes, and coming down the rocky hill in the evening blowing the shepherd's horn.
These were some of Myrtle's happiest days. Seated before the burning hemp-stalks, with her pretty brown face between her hands, she lost herself in endless reveries.
The long strings24 of wild ducks and geese which traverse, about the end of autumn, the boundless25 heavens spread from the mountains on the east to the western hills, seemed to have a depressing effect upon her mind. She used to follow them with longing26 eyes, straining them as if to overtake the wild birds in the immeasurable distance; and suddenly she would rise, spread out her arms, and cry—
"I must go! I must go! I can't stay!"
Then she would weep with her head bowed down, and Fritz, seeing her in tears, would cry too, asking—
"Why do you cry, Myrtle? Has anybody hurt you? Is it any of the boys in the village?—Kasper, Wilhelm, Heinrich? Only tell me, and I will knock him down at once! Do tell!"
"No; it is not that."
"Well, why are you crying?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want to run as far as the Falberg?"
"No; that is not far enough."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Down there! down there! ever so far! where the birds are going."
This made Fritz open his eyes and his mouth very wide.
One day in September, when they were idling along by the woods, about noon, the heat was so great and the air so still that the smoke of their little fire, instead of rising straight into the air, fell like water and crept among the briars. The grasshopper27 had ceased its dull monotonous5 chirp28, not the buzzing of a fly was to be heard, nor the warbling of a bird. The oxen and the cows, with sleepy eyes half-closed, their knees bent29 under them, were resting together under a spreading oak in the meadow, now and then lowing in a slow, protracted30 way as if in idle protest against such hot weather.
Fritz had begun by plaiting the strands31 of his whip, but he soon lay down in the long grass with his hat over his eyes, and Friedland came to lie near him, gaping32 from ear to ear.
Myrtle alone suffered no inconvenience from the overwhelming heat; sitting on the ground near the fire, with her arms wreathed around her knees, full in the sun, her large dark eyes slowly surveyed the dark arches formed by the branches of the forest.
Time passed on slowly. The distant village clock had struck twelve, then one, and two, and the young gipsy never stirred. In the woods and jagged mountain-tops, the crags, the forests, descending33 into the valleys, she heard some mysterious call. They spoke34 to her in a language not unknown to her.
"Yes," she said to herself, "yes; I have seen all that before—long ago—a long time ago."
Then with a quick, sharp glance at Fritz, who was in a deep sleep, she rose to her feet and began to fly. Her light footsteps scarcely bent the grass beneath her; she ran on and on, up the hill; Friedland turned his head round with a careless glance, then stretched out once more his languid limbs, and composed himself to sleep.
Myrtle disappeared in the midst of the brambles which border the common wood. At one bound she cleared the muddy ditch where a single frog was croaking35 amongst the rushes, and twenty minutes after she reached the top of the Roche Creuse, whence you may have a wide prospect36 of Alsace and the blue summits of the Vosges.
Then she turned to see if anybody was following her. She could still distinguish Fritz asleep in the green meadow with his hat over his eyes, and Friedland and the sleeping cattle under their tree.
Farther on she could see the village, the river, the roof of the farm-house, with its flights of pigeons eddying37 round; the long, crooked38 street and red-petticoated women walking leisurely39 up and down; the little ivy40-covered church where the good curé Niclausse had baptised her into the Christian faith and afterwards confirmed her.
And when she had sufficiently41 contemplated42 these objects, turning her face the other way towards the mountain, she was filled with delight to mark how the densely-crowded firs covered the hill-sides, up to their highest ridge43, close as the grass of the fields.
At the sight of all this grandeur44 the young gipsy felt her heart beating and expanding with unknown delight, and again running on she darted45 through a rift46 between the rocks, lined with mosses47 and ferns, to reach the beaten track through the woods.
Her whole soul—that wild, untrained soul of hers—was rushing with her and impelling48 her onwards, kindling49 her countenance with a new ardour. With her hands she clung to the ivy, with her naked feet she clung to the projections50 and the crevices51 to push on her way.
Soon she was on the other slope, running, tripping, leaping, sometimes stopping short to gaze upon surrounding objects—a large tree, a ravine, a lonely sheet of water, or a pond full of flowers and sweet-smelling water-plants.
Although she could not remember ever having seen those copses, those clearings, those heaths, at every turn in the path she would say to herself, "There, I knew it was so! I knew that tree would be there! I was sure of that rock! And there's the waterfall just below!" Although a thousand strange remembrances passed with momentary52 flashes, like sudden visions, through her mind, she could not understand it all and could explain nothing. She had not yet been able to say to herself, "What Fritz and the rest of them want to make them happy is the village, and the meadow, and the farm-house, and the fruit-trees, and the orchard, and the milk-cows, and the laying hens; plenty in the cellar, plenty in the granary, and a nice warm fire on the hearth53 in winter. But what have I to do with all these things? Wasn't I born a heathen, quite a heathen? I was born in the woods, just as the squirrel was born in an oak, just as a hawk54 was hatched on the crag and the thrush in the fir-tree!"
It is true she had never thought of these things, but she was guided by instinct; and this mysterious force drew her unconsciously about sunset to the bare heaths of the Kohle Platz, where the gangs of gipsies that wander between Alsace and Lorraine are accustomed to stay the night, and hang up their kettles among the dry heath.
Here Myrtle sat down at the foot of an old oak-tree, tired, footsore, and ragged55; and here she long sat motionless, gazing into vacant space, listening to the rustling56 of the wind amongst the tall fir-trees, happy, and feeling herself quite alone in the wide solitude57.
Night came. The stars broke out by thousands in the purple depths of the autumn sky. The moon rose and silvered with soft light the white stems of the birch-trees, which hung in graceful58 groups along the mountain sides.
The young gipsy was beginning to yield to sleep when cries in the distance roused her into an impulse to fly.
Hark! She knows the voices! They are those of Brémer, Fritz, and all the people of the farm searching for her!
Then, without a moment's hesitation59, Myrtle flew, light as a roe60, farther into the forest, stopping only at long intervals61 to listen attentively62 and anxiously.
The cries died away in the distance, and soon the only sound she could hear was the loud beating of her own heart, and she went on her way at a less rapid pace.
Very late, when the moon's rays became less brilliant, unable to stand out against her fatigue any longer, she sank down on the heath and fell fast asleep.
She was four leagues from Dosenheim, near the source of the Zinzel. Brémer was not likely to come so far to look for her.
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1
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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2
majestically
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| 雄伟地； 庄重地； 威严地； 崇高地 | |
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3
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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4
puffing
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| v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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5
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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6
monotonously
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| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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7
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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9
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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10
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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11
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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12
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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13
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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14
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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15
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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16
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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17
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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18
poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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19
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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20
mow
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| v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆 | |
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21
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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22
complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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23
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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24
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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25
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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26
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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grasshopper
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| n.蚱蜢，蝗虫，蚂蚱 | |
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28
chirp
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| v.(尤指鸟)唧唧喳喳的叫 | |
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29
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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30
protracted
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| adj.拖延的；延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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31
strands
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| n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 ) | |
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32
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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33
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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34
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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35
croaking
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的现在分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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36
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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37
eddying
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| 涡流，涡流的形成 | |
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38
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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39
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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40
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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41
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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42
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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43
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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44
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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45
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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46
rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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47
mosses
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| n. 藓类, 苔藓植物 名词moss的复数形式 | |
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48
impelling
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| adj.迫使性的，强有力的v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的现在分词 ) | |
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49
kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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50
projections
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| 预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物 | |
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51
crevices
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| n.（尤指岩石的）裂缝，缺口( crevice的名词复数 ) | |
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52
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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53
hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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54
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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55
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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56
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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57
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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58
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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59
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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60
roe
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| n.鱼卵；獐鹿 | |
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61
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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