Edelweiss: A Story

The hens cackled uneasily in their coop as Franzl left the room, and the geese in the barn added their note of remonstrance when the sleigh flew by.

It was on a beautifully clear winter's night that Pilgrim and Franzl started from Knuslingen. The stars were glittering above their heads and a firmament of glittering stars was in Franzl's heart. She was obliged to seize her bag and pinch it till she felt her well-stuffed shoe in order to convince herself that the whole was not a dream.

"See, there is my potato-patch," said Franzl; "I bought it with my own money when it was nothing but a heap of stones, and in these four years the value of it has doubled. The potatoes are as white as the whitest meal."

"Let the Knuslingers enjoy your potatoes; you shall get something better," answered Pilgrim. He went on to tell of the rescue of the buried household, and how they were all living now with Petrovitsch, who was a changed man and had become one of his best friends. It was Annele's first request, he said, that Franzl should be sent for. The old woman wept aloud when she heard of Annele's white hair. She once knew a woman, she said, whose mother had a relation, a man up in Elsass, whose hair turned white in a night from fright. It was wonderful, and she was filled with compassion for Annele, who would now be the town talk. "Folks are so stupid, and yet think they must always be saying some smart thing. I will soon teach them we don't need their silly gossip."

At every house where they saw lights Franzl wanted to get out and tell what had happened. "There lives Mr. So-and-so and Mrs. Such-a-one; kind, honest people who have grieved at Lenz's fate. It is too bad they should keep on being unhappy when there is no need of it. They would be glad, too, to know that Franzl was the first person sent for. Who can tell whether there will ever be another chance to bid good-by in this world?"

Pilgrim, however, drove pitilessly past all the good peoples' houses, stopping nowhere. If a window was opened and a head thrust out to look at the sleigh, Franzl cried as loud as she could, "Good by; God bless you." It was no matter if the bells did nearly drown the words; she had had the satisfaction of sending a kindly farewell to those she might never see again.

At the farm where the bailiff's daughter lived Pilgrim had to stop. Alas! no joy is complete in this world; Katharine was not at home. Having no children of her own, she was frequently called on to assist in bringing into the world those of others, and was at that moment watching by a sick-bed. Franzl told her news twice over to the maid, to make sure of her not forgetting a word.

Her sense of content came over her afresh on re-entering the sleigh. "Now I feel better," she said. "It is like half waking up from a good night's sleep, and just being conscious of how deliciously comfortable you are, before tumbling off to sleep again. I am not asleep; though I feel as if I were already in the life everlasting."

Pilgrim came near destroying all her pleasure by an ill-timed joke.

"Franzl," he said, "you won't fare very well up there."

"Up where?"

"In the next world. You are having your paradise now. You must not expect to have it here and there too; that would be more than your share."

"Stop! stop! let me get out; I want to go home," cried Franzl. "I will have nothing to do with you! nothing on this earth shall tempt me to give up my hope of the life everlasting. Stop, or I shall jump out!"

With a greater strength than he had supposed the old woman possessed she seized hold of the reins and tried to force them from Pilgrim's hand. He had great difficulty in quieting her by protesting it was all a joke. She could not understand a man's joking about such things as that. He quoted in Greek, and obligingly translated into Black-forest German, a passage from the life of Saint Haspucias to prove that she would not after all lose the life everlasting, because a special exception was made in favor of servants, whose life in this world was hard enough at the best. Pilgrim showed a wonderful acquaintance with the heavenly arrangements, and with difficulty resisted the temptation of assuring Franzl that he was employed by St. Peter as court-painter.

Franzl was quite pacified, and fully admitted the truth of his statement about the hard life of servants. "I am so glad to be going to see my Lenz's children," she began again presently. "The boy is called William, after you, is he not? And what is the little girl's name?"

"Marie."

"O yes; for her grandmother."

"That happily reminds me of something I had quite forgotten. The children think I have gone for their grandmother, and am fetching her home in a swan. They are depending on keeping awake till we arrive. The high and mighty princess of Knuslingen, Fuchsberg, and Knebringen must let it please her grace to be called grandmother."

Franzl thought the deception very wicked; such a name was sacred, and should only be given to a blood-relation. Her only consolation was that she would soon undeceive the children; she was not born in Knuslingen for nothing. The necessity of keeping up the honor of her native town soon restored her to complete composure.

It was well that Franzl became somewhat sobered by these discussions on the way, else she would certainly have expected to see the whole population of the village drawn up by the roadside to welcome her. As it was, her first greeting was a burst of laughter from Petrovitsch, who was so convulsed by the oddity of her appearance that he had no strength to stand. Bubby, also, excited by his master's unwonted gayety, began to bark as the best substitute for laughter at his command. "Anton Striegler knew you would come to look like that some day," cried the old fellow, maliciously; "and therefore he let you be."

"And the worms will let you be for a while longer, till you are better done; you are too tough for them now," retorted Franzl, the concentrated hate of years, and indignation at being taunted with her blighted love, finding vent in the stinging answer. It silenced Bubby's bark and Petrovitsch's laughter. Both had a salutary fear of the old woman from that time forth.

Lenz was asleep, and Annele in the room with the children, who after all had not been able to keep awake. She would have thrown her arms about old Franzl's neck, if the presence of Pilgrim and Petrovitsch had not restrained her.

"See, here are our children," she said. "Give them just one kiss; it will not wake them."

She insisted on Franzl staying in the parlor while she went into the kitchen to cook her supper. Surprise at the change that had come over her former mistress kept the old woman sitting for a while in the chair where she had been placed, but she presently followed into the kitchen.

"Oh how good it is to be able to light a fire!" said Annele. Franzl looked at her in amazement, not understanding that Annele was grateful now for everything, all the thousand little blessings that the rest of us take as a matter of course.

"What do you say to my white hair?" asked Annele.

"I wish I could give you mine; there is not a white hair on my head, and never will be. My mother used to tell me that I was born into the world with a full crop of hair."

Annele said, with a smile, that her white hair was sent her as a sign that she had been in the shadow of death and must now live at peace with all the world.

"You will forgive me too, Franzl, will you not? I thought of you in that hour of death."

Franzl could only answer with her tears.

The change in Annele was indeed wonderful. The first time she heard the bells ring she took the baby in her arms, and said, as she folded its little hands together, "O child! I never thought to hear that sound again"; and when Franzl brought the first bucket of water, she exclaimed, "Oh, how clear and beautiful the water is! I thank God for giving it to us!"

Long after the memory of this time of terror had faded from the minds of her two companions in danger, the thought of it was still vivid, to Annele, making her gentle and tender, sensitive to every hasty word. Franzl could not help saying to Pilgrim sometimes, that she feared Annele would not live long, there was something so almost heavenly about her.

The burial and deliverance of Lenz's household quite cast into the shade another event, which otherwise would have given rise to much speculation and comment.

Two days after his disaster the frozen body of a man was found under the snow in a woody hollow near Knuslingen. It was poor old Pröbler. No one mourned him so deeply as Lenz. He believed now that he had heard the old man calling him, and read a lesson in the death of this poor, half-crazy discoverer that was revealed to no one else.

Annele continued to thrive in her uncle's great house, and was as fresh and blooming as ever. She and Lenz lived there till late into the summer, when their own house was ready for them. Little William sorely troubled the old man by jumping up on sofas and chairs which Bubby was allowed to tumble about on with impunity.

Petrovitsch caught a violent cold from his exposure that night, and was strongly urged by the doctor to try the baths for his cough. He steadily refused, however, resolving in his own mind that, if he must die, he would die at home; he had had enough of homesickness. He often walked with little William on the Spannreute, where well-grown larch-trees had been set out, and trenches dug to protect the house. One day he said to him reprovingly: "William, you are just like Bubby, never satisfied with the straight path. Why will you always be jumping this way and that, over a ditch or up the side of a rock? you two are fit companions for each other." "Uncle," answered little William, "a dog is not a man, nor a man a dog." These simple words so pleased the old uncle, that he begged Lenz to leave the boy behind if he ever should return to his house on the hill.

Annele was the one most desirous of going back to the Morgenhalde. Once she would have thought it a paradise upon earth to keep Petrovitsch's big house for him, in the expectation of becoming his heir; now she cared for nothing but to pass her days in quiet, happy industry among the lonely hills.

The death of her mother, which had been concealed from her for a time, did not fall upon her as a sharp and sudden blow; it counted as one of the many horrors which were crowded into that terrible night.

Petrovitsch kept little William in the house, and induced Pilgrim to make his home with them. The passersby were often entertained by the sounds that came from the big house; the neighing as of a horse, the grunting of a pig, the whistle of a nightingale, or the squeaking of little owls. Two heads, the one of an old child, the other of a young one, were generally to be seen at the window. They were Pilgrim's and his godson's. Their great delight was trying to see which could imitate the greater number of animal sounds. Bubby joined in with a genuine bark, and Petrovitsch laughed till his laughing was cut short by his cough. For years the old man had not been out of the village. As for trying any baths, he maintained that the laughing he did at home was better than all the washing in the world.

Lenz's friends showed themselves eager to help in the rebuilding of the house on the Morgenhalde. They flocked from all sides, bringing contributions of wood and stone. But the prospect of returning to his old life gave Lenz no pleasure; he wanted to start on a new and wider field. As a man recovering from a severe illness is not satisfied with resuming the threads of his life where his illness interrupted them, so Lenz felt himself a wiser and stronger man, able to undertake larger works.

All seemed ready now for the execution of his old pet plan, and no one favored it more than Annele. Her hearty encouragement strengthened and cheered her husband. "You have always had at heart the happiness of your fellow-men. I remember your saying soon after our marriage that you rejoiced in a bright Sunday because it made thousands and thousands of persons happy. Go about among men; wherever you go, you will bring the sunlight with you. I wish I could go too and tell them all how good you are."

Accompanied by the engineer, the doctor, Pilgrim, the schoolmaster, and the weight-manufacturer, Lenz went from house to house, and from village to village, where his eloquence, his wisdom and goodness were praised by all, as well as his ready sympathy with others' needs and his quick suggestions of relief.

What in his days of prosperity he could not succeed in accomplishing was effected now as by tacit agreement; the various independent clockmakers were united in a general association.

After building afresh his old house, and bringing prosperity into those of his fellow-workmen, he now had the happiness of helping to found a new home.

He performed for Pilgrim the office which Pilgrim had once offered to perform for him in the doctor's house, and won for his friend the hand of Amanda, Pilgrim became overseer of the case-making department of the factory, and to him are due the many graceful forms of clock-cases, carved with leaves and other ornamentations, for which the wood of the new Spannreute forest, and the well-seasoned timber taken from the old house on the Morgenhalde, furnished abundant material.

In the second summer after the catastrophe on the Morgenhalde Lenz came to his uncle with the first request he had made him; it was for the means to send Faller to the baths. The doctor had recommended them as a relief for a severe bronchial affection that had been contracted on the night of the avalanche.

"There is the money for it. Tell Faller he must go to the baths for himself and me too. I am glad you do not beg on your own account. Your way of helping yourself is much better."

Great persuasions were needed to induce Faller to visit the baths. He was finally brought to consent only by Annele's earnest representations to his wife.

Annele had two friends of very different character, Faller's wife and Amanda, now Mrs. Pilgrim. Many a slip from the doctor's garden found its way up to the Morgenhalde, and was carefully planted and tended by Annele's own hand.

Faller went to the bathing establishment kept by Annele's older sister, and there fell in with an old acquaintance. The manager of the bath was the former landlord of the Lion, who had retired thither after the death of his wife. The old gentleman was as patronizing as ever, and seemed to thrive on his freedom from care. He was cheerful and even communicative. One subject, however, he never alluded to, – his past life; that would have compromised his dignity, and might have awakened awkward reminiscences between himself and Faller. He spoke handsomely of Lenz, and enjoined upon Faller to tell him that he must never allow himself to be goaded into any undertaking that he did not feel himself thoroughly fitted for. This sentence he made Faller repeat over and over again, word for word, till he knew it by heart, when the landlord put on his spectacles to see how a man actually looked who had such a sentence in his head.

His two favorite topics were the absence of justice in Brazil, and the wonder-working qualities of the springs and the whey. If some princess would only set the fashion by visiting his baths, they would become the first in importance in the world.

By telling his wish with regard to the princess, the landlord thought to show his forethought as well as the loftiness of his aspirations. Poor Faller had it impressed upon him again and again, as if he might at any moment have the disposing of a couple of dozen princesses great and small.

Faller came home apparently improved in health. Early in the spring, however, when the snow was beginning to melt, he died.

Not long afterward old Petrovitsch, too, was buried. He had made a brave struggle against death. His paroxysms of coughing had increased in violence and frequency since the autumn, and in one of them he was finally choked to death. As the doctor had conjectured, he left no property except a life-annuity which he had bought with what little money the gaming-table at Baden-Baden had spared. Thus many seeming inconsistencies in the old man's conduct were accounted for. The doctor maintained that all his dislike of other men sprang from dissatisfaction with himself.

Faller's sons were all provided for. Lenz took one into his house, and Katharine adopted the second pair of twins. She only wanted one, but the children could not bear to be parted. The little girl remained with her mother.

Franzl took delight in telling her old friend Katharine of the sort of life that was led on the Morgenhalde.

"I don't know which of us Annele spoils the most, her husband or me. The angels in heaven must rejoice to see the life they lead together. You know I am from Knuslingen, and therefore, though I mean to take no credit to myself, manage to see more than most persons. At first there lurked a fear of each other in their hearts, – a fear lest some thoughtless word might open the old wound, as flames sometimes break out afresh amid the ruins of a house that has been burned. But they gradually learned that each had always dearly loved the other, and that what had seemed unkindness and hate was only the pain of not having rightly learned to conform to each other's habits. Now Annele has given up all desire for a hotel, and Lenz has grown more of a man. The Liederkranz has become quite a different sort of society, and my Lenz is the chief member of it; all say he has the finest voice and the best managed of all the singers. There is a new society started which in some way is to help everybody. The weight-manufacturer from Knuslingen can explain it better than I can, for he is one of the members. Did you know that my Lenz's musical clock had taken the first prize at some great exhibition, and that he had received a medal from England? He told Annele that he cared for it only as it might prove to her that he was capable of accomplishing something after all; at which she cried and told him, all that was buried with their past life, and never to be recalled; that she needed no one now to bear witness to his worth; none knew it as well as she. Then Lenz looked up to his mother's picture and said, 'Mother, sing in heaven! Your children are happy.'"

Katharine listened to this glowing account with proper expressions of joy. Franzl, however, was not easily stopped when once wound up, and continued: "Do you know what we inherited from Petrovitsch? Nothing but his dog, which has to be fed on the fat of the land. I say dry bread and potatoes are good enough for him, but Lenz pets him on account of his having saved little Marie's life. Not a penny did Petrovitsch leave us. The doctor always said he had put all his money into a life-insurance company, – I think he called it, – which paid him so much a year. The handsome fortune that he scraped together from all parts of the world was lost at the gaming-table. Players are certainly the cleverest and the stupidest creatures in the world. The doctor says so, and it must be true. – Don't you mean to stay over to-morrow for the funeral of the old mayoress? She was nearly seventy-eight years old, and the last of that generation. Lenz said, when his uncle died, that he was glad he left him nothing, for he would rather make his own way in the world. He means to take William and young Faller as apprentices, and later to send them abroad."

"And do they treat you well?" asked Katharine, for the sake of saying something.

"Dear me, only too well! I don't know why it is that every one thinks life could not go on happily without me. I wish I was not quite so old; my comfort is that my grandmother lived to be eighty-three, and for aught any one can tell, it might have been ninety-three; those old people who can't read and write often make mistakes. Perhaps I shall live as long myself. I enjoy my food and my sleep. There is a blessing on all that goes on in this house. Look at the wood; has it not grown nicely? and it is all our own. As truly as that forest grows and thrives where God planted it, so truly does all good grow and thrive with us. Are they not fine young trees? we shall live to see them grow strong and tall."

Katharine could not wait for that, and as she went off with the twins, accompanied by their mother, Lenz, and Annele, Franzl called after her from the kitchen: "Katharine, you must make up your mind to stand god-mother next time."

That is the story of Lenz and Annele of the Morgenhalde; which explains why the young, white-haired mother asked her son, when he was setting off for foreign lands, to bring her home a sprig of edelweiss.

When Lenz returned from starting the two youths on their way, he found a garland of fresh flowers about his mother's picture. Eighteen years ago that day she had been buried, and Annele always kept the anniversary. They felt in their hearts, though they never said it, that her blessed memory bloomed ever fresh within them, like the flowers in the field.

Faller's widow and daughter sat down to dinner with them at noon. "If my husband had but lived to see our two sons set off on their travels together!" sighed the poor woman. Lenz tried to comfort her by telling how well the twins were doing that Katharine had adopted. One had already risen to be sergeant in the army, the other was his adopted father's assistant, and would doubtless be his heir. Faller's daughter, a tall, slender girl of fifteen, said she had promised to write to William and her brother the first of every month.

After dinner Lenz sat down to his work as usual. Eighteen years ago it had calmed a greater grief than the departure of his son occasioned him to-day. Annele sat by him with her sewing; no longer full of an unrest which she communicated to him, but rather shedding a beneficent influence around her. His work prospered better when she looked on. She spoke little, and the few words she did say showed within what a narrow circle her thoughts were now confined. "William takes six shirts with him, made from the cotton your blessed mother spun."

The places of the two apprentices were already filled; for parents the country round were anxious to have their boys learn their trade with Lenz. One of the new-comers was, to Franzl's great delight, a grandson of the weight-manufacturer of Knuslingen.

Towards evening the schoolmaster came up the hill with a great bundle of papers under his arm, labelled in large letters, "Acts of the Clockmakers' Union." He asked Lenz to go a little way into the wood with him before the other members arrived, and during their absence Annele ranged two rows of chairs about the room, for Lenz was now president of the association.