A QUIET CORNERJacob Alberts
A QUIET CORNERJacob Alberts
Jacob Alberts
From now on Wienke came to see the old woman in her room daily. Soon she sat down of her own accord on the Angora footstool and Trien' Jans gave her little pieces of meat or bread of which she always kept some on hand, and let her throw them on the floor; then the gull shot out of some corner, screeching, with outstretched wings, and fell upon them. At first the child used to be frightened and screamed at the big flapping bird; but soon it was like a game they had learnt, and as soon as she stuck even her head through the crack of the door the bird shot outtowards her and lighted on her head or shoulder till the old woman came to her aid and the feeding could begin. Trien' Jans, who in general could not bear even to have anyone stretch out his hand towards her Klaus, now looked on patiently while the child gradually won the bird entirely away from her. It let Wienke catch it willingly; she carried it about and wrapped it in her apron, and, when, on the mound, the little yellow dog sometimes sprang about her and jumped jealously at the bird, she would cry out: "Not you, not you, Perle!" and would lift the gull so high in her little arms that it would free itself and fly away shrieking across the mound, and the dog would try to secure its place in her arms by jumping and rubbing against his little mistress.
When Hauke's or Elke's eyes chanced to fall on this odd group, like four leaves all held fast on one stem by only a common lack, a tender glance would indeed fly towards their child; when they turned away there remained in their faces only pain which each bore for himself, for they had never yet unburdened their hearts to each other about the child. One summer morning as Wienke was sitting with the old woman and the two animals on the big stone in front of the barn door, her parents, the dikegrave with his white horse behind him, the reins over his arm, passed by; he was going out on the dike and had fetched his horse from the fens himself; on the mound his wife had slipped her arm through his. The sun shone down warmly; it was almost sultry, and now and then there came a puff of wind from the south-southeast. The child must have found it tiresome where she was: "Wienke wants to go," she called, shook the gull from her lap, and reached for her father's hand.
"Come along then," he said.
But Elke exclaimed: "In this wind? She'll be blown away!"
"I'll hold on to her; and the air is warm today and the water merry; she can see it dance."
So Elke ran into the house and fetched a little shawl and a cap for her child. "But there's going to be bad weather," she said; "see that you hurry and go and get back again soon."
Hauke laughed: "That won't catch us!" and lifted the child up to his saddle in front of him. Elke remained out on the mound for a while and, shading her eyes with her hand, watched the two trotting out on the road and over to the dike; Trien' Jans sat on the stone and mumbled something incomprehensible with her faded lips.
The child lay without moving in her father's arm; and it seemed as if, oppressed by the thundery air, she were breathing with difficulty. He bent his head to her: "Well, Wienke?" he asked.
The child looked at him for a while. "Father," she said, "you can surely do that! Can't you do everything?"
"What ought I to be able to do, Wienke?"
But she was silent; she seemed not to have understood her own question.
It was high tide; when they came up on the dike the reflection of the sun on the great expanse of water shone in her eyes, a whirlwind drove the waves up high in an eddy, and others followed and beat splashingly against the shore; she clasped her little hands so fearfully about her father's fist in which he held the reins that the white horse bounded to one side. Her pale blue eyes looked up in confused terror to Hauke: "The water, Father, the water!" she cried.
But he freed himself gently and said: "Be quiet, child, you are with your father; the water won't hurt you!"
She smoothed the pale blonde hair away from her forehead and ventured to look out at the sea again. "It won't hurt me," she said trembling; "no, tell it not to hurt us; you can do that and then it won't hurt us."
"I can't do that, child," replied Hauke seriously; "but the dike on which we're riding protects us and it was your father who thought that out and had it built."
Her eyes looked at him as if she did not quite understandthat; then she hid her strikingly small head in her father's loose coat.
"Why do you hide yourself, Wienke?" he whispered to her; "are you still frightened?" And a trembling voice came from the folds of his coat: "Wienke doesn't want to see; but you can do everything, can't you, Father?"
A distant clap of thunder rolled up against the wind. "Oh ho!" exclaimed Hauke, "there it comes!" and turned his horse to go back. "Now we'll go home to Mother."
The child drew a deep breath, but not until they had reached the mound and the house did she raise her little head from her father's breast. Then in the room when Elke had taken off the little shawl and the cap she remained standing like a little dumb ninepin in front of her mother. "Well, Wienke," said the latter and shook the little girl gently, "do you like the great water?"
But the child opened her eyes wide: "It speaks," she said; "Wienke is frightened."
"It doesn't speak; it only roars and surges."
The child looked off into the distance. "Has it legs?" she asked again; "can it come over the dike?"
"No, Wienke, your father takes care of that, he is a dikegrave."
"Yes," said the child and clapped her hands with an idiotic smile; "Father can do everything—everything." Then suddenly, turning away from her mother, she cried: "Let Wienke go to Trien' Jans, she has red apples!"
And Elke opened the door and let the child out. After she had shut it again she looked up at her husband, and an expression of the deepest sorrow lay in the eyes which hitherto had always brought consolation and courage to his aid.
He held out his hand and pressed hers as if there were no need of any further word between them; but she said softly: "No, Hauke, let me speak: the child that I have borne to you after waiting for years will always remain achild. O, dear God! She is feeble-minded; I must say it before you once."
"I have known it a long time," said Hauke, and held tight the hand that his wife wanted to draw away from him.
"And so we are still alone after all," she said.
But Hauke shook his head: "I love her and she throws her little arms around me and presses herself close against my breast; I would not do without that for any treasure!"
The woman looked darkly ahead of her: "But why?" she said; "What have I, poor mother, done to deserve it?"
"Yes, Elke, I too have asked that, asked Him who alone can know; but, as we both know, the Almighty gives men no answer—perhaps because we should not understand it."
He had taken his wife's other hand and drew her gently to him: "Don't let yourself grow disturbed and be hindered in loving your child, as you do; you can be sure she understands that."
At that Elke threw herself on her husband's breast and wept her fill and was no longer alone with her sorrow. Then suddenly she smiled at him; after pressing his hand vehemently she ran out and fetched her child from old Trien' Jans' room, and took her on her lap and fondled and kissed her till the little girl said stammeringly: "Mother, my dear Mother!"
Thus the people on the dikegrave's farm lived quietly together; if the child had not been there much would have been lacking.
Gradually the summer went by; the birds of passage had passed through, the air was empty of the song of the larks; only in front of the barns where they picked up grains of corn, while the threshing was going on, occasionally one or two could be heard as they flew away screeching; everything was already hard frozen. In the kitchen of the main house old Trien' Jans sat one afternoon on the wooden step of a stairway that led up from beside the range to the attic. During the last few weeks it seemed as if she had returned to life; she came gladly into the kitchen sometimes, and saw Elke at work there; there could no longer be any question of her legs not being able to carry her there, since one day when little Wienke had pulled her up there by her apron. Now the child knelt at her side and looked with her quiet eyes into the flames that flickered up out of the stove-hole. One of her little hands clasped the sleeve of the old woman, the other lay in her own pale blonde hair. Trien' Jans was telling a story: "You know," she said, "I was in your great grandfather's service as a housemaid and then I had to feed the pigs; he was cleverer than them all—then, it is terribly long ago, but one evening, the moon was shining and they closed the outer sluice and she could not get back into the sea. Oh, how she screamed and tore her hard shaggy hair with her little fish-hands! Yes, child, I saw it and heard her screaming myself! The ditches between the fens were all full of water and the moon shining on them made them sparkle like silver and she swam from one ditch into the other and lifted her arms and struck what were her hands together so that you could hear it a long way off, as if she wanted to pray; but, child, those creatures cannot pray. I was sitting in front of the door on a few beams that had been brought up there to be used in building, and looking far out across the fens; and the water-woman still swam in the ditches, and when she raised her arms they too glittered like silver and diamonds. At last I did not see her any more and the wild geese and gulls that I had not heard the whole time began to fly through the air again, hissing and cackling."
The old woman ceased; the child had caught up one word. "Could not pray?" she asked. "What do you say? Who was it?"
"Child," said the old woman, "it was the water-woman; those are accursed creatures who can never be saved."
"Never be saved," repeated the child and her little breast heaved with a deep sigh as if she had understood that.
"Trien' Jans," came a deep voice from the kitchen door and she started slightly. It was the dikegrave Hauke Haienwho was leaning there against the post. "What are you saying to the child? Haven't I told you to keep your legends to yourself or to tell them to the geese and hens?"
The old woman looked at him with an angry glance and pushed the little girl away from her: "Those are no legends," she murmured half to herself, "my great-uncle told me that."
"Your great-uncle, Trien'? Why just now you said you had experienced it yourself!"
"It's all the same," said the old woman; "but you don't believe, Hauke Haien; I suppose you want to make my great-uncle out a liar." Then she drew nearer to the range and stretched her hands out over the flames in the grate.
The dikegrave threw a glance towards the window; it was scarcely dusk as yet outside. "Come, Wienke," he said and drew his feeble-minded child to him; "come with me; I want to show you something from out on the dike! Only we shall have to walk; the white horse is at the blacksmith's." Then he went with her into the living-room and Elke tied thick woolen shawls about the little girl's throat and shoulders; soon after her father took her out on the old dike towards the northwest, past Jeverssand, to where the flats lay broad before them almost farther than the eye could reach.
Part of the time he carried her, part of the time he led her by the hand; the twilight deepened gradually; in the distance everything disappeared in mist and vapor. But there, where one could still see, the invisibly swelling currents of the shallows had broken the ice, and, as Hauke had once seen it in his youth, smoking fog now rose from the cracks along which the uncanny, impish figures were once more to be seen hopping towards one another and bowing and suddenly stretching out wide, in a terrible fashion.
The child clung to her father in fear and covered her little face with his hand: "The sea-devils!" she whispered tremblingly between his fingers; "the sea-devils!"
He shook his head: "No, Wienke, neither water-womennor sea-devils; there are no such things; who told you about them?"
She looked up at him dully but did not answer. He stroked her cheeks tenderly: "Just look again," he said; "those are only poor hungry birds. Just see how the big one spreads his wings now; they are catching the fish that come into the steaming cracks."
"Fish," repeated Wienke.
"Yes, child, all those creatures are alive like us, thereisnothing else. But God is everywhere!"
Little Wienke had fixed her eyes on the ground and held her breath; she looked as if she were gazing into an abyss terrified. Perhaps it only seemed so; her father looked at her long; he bent down and looked into her little face, but no feeling of her imprisoned soul was visible in it. He lifted her in his arms and stuck her benumbed hands into one of his thick woolen gloves: "there, my little Wienke," and the child probably did not hear the tone of intense tenderness in his words—"there, warm yourself close to me! You are our child after all, our only one. You love us——" The man's voice broke, but the little girl pressed her head tenderly into his rough beard.
Thus they went home full of peace.
After the New Year, trouble once more entered into the house; the dikegrave was seized with a marsh fever; it went hard with him too, and when, under Elke's nursing and care, he recovered, he scarcely seemed to be the same man. The languor of his body also lay upon his mind, and Elke was worried to see how easily content he was at all times. Nevertheless towards the end of March he was moved to mount his white horse and ride out again for the first time along the top of his dike. It was on an afternoon and the sun, which had been shining earlier in the day, had long since been concealed by the haze.
A few times during the winter there had been high tides but they had done no serious damage; only over on theother bank a herd of sheep on an islet had been drowned and a bit of the foreland had been washed away; here on this side and in the new koog no harm worth mentioning had been done. But in the previous night a stronger gale had raged and now the dikegrave himself had to ride out and inspect everything with his own eyes. He had already ridden all along the new dike, beginning below at the southeast corner, and everything was in good condition, but as he came towards the northeast corner where the new dike ran up to the old one, the former was indeed uninjured, but where before the water-course had reached the old one and flowed along beside it, he saw that a great strip of the grass-line had been destroyed and washed away, and a hollow had been eaten in the body of the dike by the tide, which moreover, had thus laid bare a whole maze of mouse-passages. Hauke dismounted and inspected the damage from nearby: the destructive mouse-passages seemed unmistakably to continue on beyond where they could be seen.
He was seriously frightened; all this should have been thought of and prevented at the time the new dike was built; as it had been overlooked then it must be taken care of now! The cattle were not yet out on the fens, the grass was unusually backward; in whatever direction he glanced it all looked bleak and empty. He mounted his horse and rode back and forth along the bank: the tide was low and he did not fail to perceive that the current from outside had bored a new bed for itself in the mud and had come from the northwest against the old dike: the new one however, as far as it was involved, had been able to withstand the onslaught of the waves owing to its gentler profile.
A new mountain of annoyance and work rose before the dikegrave's mental vision: not only would the old dike have to be strengthened here but its profile would also have to be approximated to the new one; above all, the water-course, from which danger now threatened again, would have to be diverted by new dams or brush hedges. Once more he rode along the new dike to the extreme northwest cornerand then back again, his eyes fixed on the newly channeled bed of the water-course, which was plainly to be seen at his side in the bared mud. The white horse fretted to go on, and snorted and pawed the ground, but Hauke held him back; he wanted to ride slowly and he wanted also to master the inner disquietude which was fermenting and seething within him with ever-increasing strength.
If a storm should come bringing with it high tides—such a one as in 1655, when men and property were swallowed up uncounted—if it should come again as it had already come several times!—a hot shudder trickled over the rider—the old dike, it could never stand the violent attack that would be made on it! What, what could be done then? There would be one way, and one way only, to save perhaps the old koog, and the property and life in it. Hauke felt his heart stand still, his usually strong head whirl; he did not speak it aloud, but within him it was spoken clearly enough: your koog, the Hauke-Haien-Koog, would have to be sacrificed and the new dike broken through.
Already he saw in imagination the rushing flood breaking in and covering grass and clover with its salt seething froth. His spur gashed into the white horse's flank, and with a cry it flew forward along the dike and down the path that led to the dikegrave's mound.
His head full of inward alarm and confused plans, he came home. He threw himself into his armchair and when Elke entered the room with their daughter he stood up again, lifted the child up and kissed her; then he drove the little yellow dog away from him with a few light blows. "I've got to go up to the tavern again!" he said and took his cap from the peg on the door, where he had only just hung it.
His wife looked at him troubled: "What do you want to do there? It's already growing dark, Hauke."
"Dike affairs," he murmured. "I'll meet some of the commissioners there."
She followed him and pressed his hand, for by the time he had finished speaking he was already outside the door.Hauke Haien, who hitherto had made all his decisions alone, now felt anxious to hear a word from those whose opinions he had formerly regarded as scarcely worth considering. In the inn he found Ole Peters sitting at the card table with two of the commissioners and a man who lived in the koog. "You've come from out on the dike, I suppose, dikegrave," said the former picking up the half-dealt cards and throwing them down again.
"Yes, Ole," replied Hauke; "I was out there; it looks bad."
"Bad? Well, it will cost a few hundred sods and some straw work I suppose; I was out there too this afternoon."
"We shan't get off as cheap as that, Ole," answered the dikegrave. "The water-course is there again and even if it doesn't strike against the old dike from the north now, it does from the northwest."
"You ought to have left it where you found it," said Ole dryly.
"That means," replied Hauke, "you're not concerned in the new koog and therefore it should not exist. That is your own fault. But if we have to plant brush hedges to protect the old dike the green clover behind the new one will more than make up for that."
"What do you say, dikegrave?" cried the commissioners; "hedges? How many? You like to do everything the most expensive way!"
The cards lay on the table untouched. "I'll tell you, dikegrave," said Ole Peters leaning his arms on the table, "your new koog that you've foisted on us is eating us up. Everyone is still suffering under the cost of your broad dike; now it's consuming the old dike too and you want us to renew that! Fortunately it's not so bad; it held this time and will continue to do so. Just mount your white horse again tomorrow and look at it once more."
Hauke had come to the tavern out of the peace of his home. Behind the words he had just heard, which after all were fairly moderate, there lay—he could not fail to recognize it—an obstinate resistance. It seemed to himthat he lacked the strength he had formerly had to cope with it. "I'll do as you advise, Ole," he said: "only I'm afraid I shall find it as I saw it today."
A restless night followed this day; Hauke tossed sleeplessly about on his pillow. "What is the matter?" asked Elke, kept awake by worry about her husband; "if there is anything on your mind tell it to me; we have always done that."
"It is not of any consequence, Elke," he replied; "there are some repairs to be made to the dike, to the sluices; you know that I always have to think such things out in my mind at night." He said nothing further; he wanted to keep himself free to act as he chose. Without his being conscious of it his wife's clear insight and strong mind were an obstacle to him in his present weakness and involuntarily he avoided it.
On the following morning as he came out onto the dike he saw a different world from the one he had found the day before; it was indeed low tide again but the day was growing and the rays from the bright spring sun fell almost perpendicularly on the shallows which extended as far as the eye could reach; the white gulls glided calmly hither and thither and, invisible above them, high under the azure sky the larks sang their eternal melody. Hauke, who did not know how nature can deceive us with her charm, stood on the northwest corner of the dike and sought the new bed of the water-course which had given him such a shock the day before; but with the sunlight darting directly down from the zenith he could not even find it at first; not until he shaded his eyes with his hand from the dazzling rays did it show itself unmistakably. Nevertheless the shadows in the dusk of the evening before must have deceived him; it was outlined but very weakly now; the mouse-passages that had been laid bare must have been more responsible for the damage done to the dike than the tide. To be sure, it must be changed; but by careful digging and, as Ole Peters had said, by fresh sodding and a few rods of straw work the damage could be repaired.
"It wasn't so bad, after all," he said to himself with relief, "you made a fool of yourself yesterday!" He called the commissioners together and the work was decided upon, for the first time without any objection being raised. The dikegrave thought he felt a strengthening calm spreading through his still weakened body; and in a few weeks everything was neatly carried out.
The year went on but the older it grew the more clearly the newly laid grass shot up green through its covering of straw, with the more agitation did Hauke walk or ride past this spot. He turned away his eyes, he rode close along the inside of the dike; several times when he would have had to pass the place and his horse was ready saddled for him to start he had it led back into the stable; then again, when he had nothing to do there, he would suddenly hurry out there on foot just so as to get away quickly and unseen from his mound; sometimes too he had turned back, he had not been able to trust himself to examine the dismal place anew; and finally he had felt as if he would like to tear everything open again with his hands; for this bit of the dike lay before his eyes like a prick of conscience that had taken form outside of him. And yet his hand could not touch it again and he could speak of it to no one, not even to his wife. Thus September had come; in the night a moderate wind had raged and finally had shifted to the northwest. On the following dull morning, when the tide was low, Hauke rode out on the dike and a start ran through him as he let his eyes rove over the shallows; there, coming from the northwest he suddenly saw it again and cut through more sharply and deeply, the new spectral bed of the water-course; exert his eyes as he might, it refused to disappear.
When he came home Elke took his hand; "What is the matter, Hauke?" she asked, looking into his gloomy face; "surely there is no new misfortune? We are so happy now; I feel as if you were at peace with them all."
In the face of these words he could not express his confused fear.
"No, Elke," he said, "no one makes an enemy of me; only it is a responsible office to protect the community from God's sea."
He freed himself so as to avoid further questioning from the wife that he loved. He went into the stable and shed as if he had to inspect everything; but he saw nothing around him; he was only intent on quieting his prick of conscience, on trying to convince himself that it was a morbidly exaggerated fear.
"The year of which I am telling you," said my host, the schoolmaster, after a while, "was the year 1756, which will never be forgotten about here; in Hauke Haien's house it brought with it a death. At the end of September the almost ninety-year-old Trien' Jans was found dying in the room which had been given up to her in the barn. According to her desire she had been propped up against her pillows and her eyes looked through the little leaded panes into the distance; there must have been a thinner over a denser layer of air lying there along the sky for at this moment there was a clear mirage and the sea was reflected like a glistening strip of silver above the edge of the dike so that it shone dazzlingly into the room; the south end of Jeverssand too was visible."
At the foot of the bed crouched little Wienke and held her father's hand tightly in one of hers as he stood close by. Death was just engraving the Hippocratic face on the dying woman and the child stared breathlessly at the uncanny, incomprehensible change in the plain countenance with which she was so familiar. "What is she doing? What is it, Father?" she whispered fearfully and dug her finger nails into her father's hand.
"She is dying," said the dikegrave.
"Dying," repeated the child and seemed to fall into confused thought.
But the old woman moved her lips once more: "Jins! Jins!" a shrill cry of distress broke from her and she stretched out her bony arms towards the reflection of thesea that glistened outside: "Help me! Help me! You are above the water. * * * God have mercy on the others!"
Her arms sank, there was a slight cracking of the bedstead; she had ceased to live.
The child drew a deep sigh and raised her pale eyes to her father: "Is she still dying?" she asked.
"She has finished!" said the dikegrave, and took the child in his arms. "She is far away from us now, with God."
"With God," repeated the child and was silent for a while as if she were thinking over the words. "Is it good to be with God?"
"Yes, best of all." But in Hauke's heart the dying woman's last words tolled heavily. "God have mercy on the others!"—the words sounded softly within him. What did the old witch mean? Can the dying prophesy?
Soon, after Trien' Jans had been buried up by the church, there began to be ever louder talk of all kinds of misfortune and curious vermin that were said to have frightened the people in northern Friesland. And it was certain that on the Sunday in Mid-Lent the golden cock had been thrown down from the top of the tower by a whirlwind; and it was true too that in midsummer a shower of large insects fell from heaven like snow so that it was impossible to open one's eyes and they lay nearly as high as a hand on the fens and no one had ever seen anything like it. But after the end of September when the head-man and the maid Ann Grete came back from town where they had driven with grain and butter for the market, they climbed down from their wagon with faces pale with fear. "What is it? What is the matter with you?" cried the other maids, who had come running out when they heard the sound of the wagon.
Ann Grete in her traveling dress stepped breathlessly into the roomy kitchen. "Oh, hurry up and tell us!" called the girls again, "where is the misfortune?"
"Oh, may our dear Jesus protect us!" cried Ann Grete. "You know from the other side, across the water, that old Molly from Siegelhof—we always stand together with ourbutter at the corner near the apothecary's—she told me about it and Iven Johns said too, 'that means a misfortune,' he said, 'a misfortune for the whole of northern Friesland; believe me Ann Grete!' And"—she lowered her voice—"perhaps after all it's not all right with the dikegrave's white horse."
"Ssh! Ssh!" said the other maids.
"Yes, yes; what does it matter to me! But over there, on the other side, it's going on worse than with us! Not only flies and vermin, blood too has fallen like rain from heaven; and on the Sunday morning after that when the pastor went to his washbasin there were five death's-heads, the size of peas, in it, and they all came to see it; in the month of August horrible red-headed caterpillars went through the land and ate up the grain and flour and bread and whatever they could find and no fire was able to destroy them!"
Ann Grete suddenly ceased; none of the maids had noticed that their mistress had come into the kitchen. "What tales are you telling there?" she asked. "Don't let your master hear that!" And as they all wanted to begin to tell her she went on, "It's not necessary; I heard enough of it; go about your work, that will do you more good!" Then she took Ann Grete with her into the sitting-room to go through her market accounts with her.
So in the dikegrave's house none of the family paid any attention to the superstitious gossip that was going about; but it was different in the other houses and the longer the evenings grew the more easily did it find its way in. Everyone lived as if in an oppressive atmosphere and secretly people said to themselves that a misfortune, and a heavy one, would fall on northern Friesland.
It was in October, before All Saints' Day. A strong wind had blown from the southwest all day; in the evening the crescent moon was in the sky, dark brown clouds drove past and a medley of shade and dull light flew across the earth; the storm was growing. In the dikegrave's room theempty supper table still stood; the men had been sent into the stable to look after the cattle; the maids were busy in the house and in the attics seeing that the doors and windows were securely fastened so that the storm should not gain an entrance and do damage. Hauke stood beside his wife at the window; he had just swallowed down his supper; he had been out on the dike. He had gone there on foot early in the afternoon; here and there, where the dike looked weak, he had had pointed stakes and sacks of clay or earth piled up; everywhere he had left men to drive in the stakes and make dams with the sacks in front as soon as the tide should begin to damage the dike. The largest number he had placed at the corner towards the northwest at the intersection of the old and new dikes; their instructions were not to leave the places assigned to them except in case of necessity. That was what he had left behind him and then, scarcely a quarter of an hour ago, he had come back to the house wet and disheveled and now, his ear fixed on the gusts of winds that rattled the leaded panes, he gazed out absently into the wild night; the clock behind the pane of glass in the wall was just striking eight. The child, who was standing beside her mother, started and buried her head in her mother's dress. "Klaus!" she called, crying, "where is my Klaus?"
She might well ask, for this year, as indeed the year before, the gull had not flown away for the winter. Her father did not heed the question, but her mother lifted the child in her arms. "Your Klaus is in the barn," she said, "he has a warm place there."
"Warm?" said Wienke, "is that good?"
"Yes, that's good."
The master still stood at the window. "It won't do any longer, Elke," he said; "call one of the girls, the storm will break in the panes; the shutters must be screwed on!"
A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOLJacob Alberts
A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOLJacob Alberts
Jacob Alberts
At her mistress's word the maid had run out; they could see from the room how her skirts were blown about; but when she unfastened the catch the wind tore the shutter out of her hand and threw it against the window so that afew broken panes flew into the room and one of the lights flared and went out. Hauke himself had to go out to help and it was only with great difficulty that the shutters were at last got into place. When they opened the door again to come into the house a gust of wind followed them that made the glass and silver in the cupboard shake and clatter; upstairs in the house above their heads the beams trembled and cracked as if the gale were trying to tear the roof off the walls. But Hauke did not come back into the room. Elke heard him walking across the floor towards the stable. "The white horse! The white horse, John; quick!" She heard him call the order; then he came into the room, his hair tumbled but his gray eyes sparkling. "The wind has shifted!" he cried, "to the northwest, at half spring-tide! No wind; we have never experienced such a storm!"
Elke had grown as pale as death: "And you must go out there again?"
He seized both her hands and pressed them convulsively: "That I must, Elke."
Slowly she raised her dark eyes to his and for a few seconds they looked at each other; but it was like an eternity. "Yes, Hauke," answered the woman; "I know well that you must!"
There was a sound of trotting before the front door. She flung herself on Hauke's neck and for a moment it seemed as if she could not let him go; but that too was only for a second. "This isourfight," said Hauke; "you are safe here, no tide has ever come up to this house. And pray to God to be with me too!"
Hauke wrapped himself in his cloak and Elke took a scarf and wound it carefully round his neck; she wanted to say a word, but her trembling lips refused to utter it.
Outside the white horse neighed so that it sounded like a trumpet in the howling storm. Elke went out with her husband; the old ash creaked as if it were being split asunder. "Mount, master," called the man, "the white horse is as if mad; the rein might break." Hauke threwhis arms round his wife: "I shall be here again at sunrise!"
Already he had leapt onto his horse; the animal reared; then, like a war-horse rushing into battle, it charged down the mound with its rider out into the night and the howling of the storm. "Father, my Father!" cried a child's plaintive voice after him: "my dear Father!"
Wienke had run out after them in the dark; but she had not gone more than a hundred steps before she stumbled against a heap of earth and fell.
The man Johns brought the crying child back to her mother; the latter was leaning against the trunk of the ash, the boughs of which lashed the air above her, staring out absently into the night in which her husband had disappeared; when the roaring of the gale and the distant thunder of the sea ceased for a moment she started as if frightened; she felt as if everything was trying just to destroy him and would be dumb instantly when it had got him. Her knees trembled, the wind had blown her hair down and now played with it at will. "Here is the child!" John shouted to her; "hold her tight!" and he pressed the little girl into her mother's arms.
"The child? I'd forgotten you, Wienke!" she exclaimed; "God forgive me." Then she hugged her to her breast as closely as only love can and dropped on her knees: "Lord God, and Thou, my Jesus, let us not become widow and orphan! Protect him, Oh dear God; only Thou and I, we alone know him!" And there was no more interruption to the gale; it resounded and thundered as if the whole world were coming to an end in one vast reverberation of sound.
"Go into the house, Missis!" said Johns; "come!" And he helped them and led the two into the house and into the sitting-room.
The dikegrave, Hauke Haien, flew forward on his white horse towards the dike. The narrow path was like a mire, for excessively heavy rain had fallen in the preceding days; nevertheless the wet sticky clay did not seem to holdthe horse's hoofs, it moved as if treading on a firm dry road. The clouds drove across the sky in a mad chase; below, the wide marsh lay like an unrecognizable desert filled with agitated shades; from the water behind the dike came an ever-increasing dull roar as if it must swallow up everything else. "Forward, my white horse!" cried Hauke; "we're riding our worst ride!"
At that moment a sound like a death cry came from under his mount's hoofs. He pulled up and looked round; at his side, close above the ground, screeching mockingly as they went, moved a flock of white gulls, half flying, half tossed by the gale; they were seeking protection on shore. One of them—the moon shone fleetingly through the clouds—lay crushed on the path: it seemed to the rider as if a red ribbon fluttered from its neck. "Klaus!" he cried. "Poor Klaus!"
Was it his child's bird? Had it recognized horse and rider and tried to seek shelter with them? He did not know. "Forward!" he cried again, and the white horse had already lifted his hoofs for a new race when suddenly there was a pause in the storm and a deathlike silence took its place; it lasted but an instant, then the gale returned with renewed fury; but in the meantime the rider's ear had caught the sound of men's voices and the faint barking of dogs and when he turned his head back towards the village he distinguished, in the moonlight that broke forth, people on the mounds and in front of the houses busy about wagons that were loaded high; he saw, as if in flight, still other wagons driving hurriedly towards the upland; the lowing of cattle being driven up there out of their warm stables, met his ear. "Thank God, they are saving themselves and their cattle!" his heart cried; and then came an inward shriek of terror: "My wife! My child! No. No; the water will not come up to our mound!"
But it was only for a moment; everything flew by him like a vision.
A fearful squall came roaring up from the sea and into its face horse and rider stormed up the narrow path to thedike. Once on top Hauke halted his steed with force. But where was the sea? Where Jeverssand? Where lay the opposite shore? Nothing but mountains of water faced him, rising up threateningly against the night sky, seeking to overtop one another in the dreadful dusk, and beating, one over the next, on the shore. They came forward with white crests, howling, as if the roar of all the terrible beasts of prey in the wilderness were in them. The white horse pawed the ground and snorted out into the din; but it came over the rider as if here all human power were at an end; as if night, death, chaos must now set in.
Still he considered: after all it was a storm-tide; only he himself had never seen such a one as that; his wife, his child, they were safe on the high mound, in the solid house; but his dike—and pride shot through his heart—the Hauke-Haien-Dike, as the people called it; now was the time for it to prove how dikes must be built!
But—what was this? He was at the angle between the two dikes; where were the men whom he had ordered here, whose work it was to watch this spot? He looked north up the old dike; for he had sent a few up there too. Neither here nor there could he see a soul; he rode out a piece; but still he was alone: only the soughing of the storm and the surging of the sea that filled the air to an immeasurable distance smote deafeningly on his ear. He turned his horse back; he came again to the deserted corner and let his eyes pass along the line of the new dike; he saw distinctly, the waves rolled up here more slowly, less violently; it almost seemed as if there were other water there. "It will stand, all right!" he murmured and felt a laugh rise within him.
But his inclination to laugh soon passed as his eyes glanced farther along the line of his dike: on the northwest corner—what was that? He saw a dark swarm of moving beings; he saw how industriously they stirred and hurried—there could be no doubt, they were men! What were they trying to do, what work were they doing on his dike now! And already his spurs were in the white horse's flanks and the animal was flying with him thither; the galecame from the broad side, at times the gusts came with such force that they were almost swept down from the dike into the new koog; but horse and rider knew where they were riding. Hauke already perceived that probably a few dozen men were working industriously there together and already he saw distinctly that a gutter was cut right across through the new dike. Violently he reined in his horse. "Stop!" he cried, "stop! What devil's work are you doing here?"
The men had ceased shoveling with a start when they suddenly perceived the dikegrave among them; the wind had carried his words to them and he saw that several were trying to answer him; but he only caught their vehement gestures, for they all stood at his left and what they said was carried away by the gale which was so violent out here that it hurled them against one another so that they were obliged to crowd together. Hauke measured with his quick eyes the gutter that had been dug and the height of the water which, in spite of the new profile, dashed up almost to the top of the dike and spattered horse and rider. Only ten minutes more work and then—he saw it distinctly—then the high tide would break through the gutter and the Hauke-Haien Koog would be buried by the sea!
The dikegrave beckoned one of the laborers to the other side of his horse. "Now, speak," he shouted, "what are you doing here, what is the meaning of this?"
And the man shouted back: "We've got to break through the new dike, sir! So that the old dike doesn't break."
"What have you got to do?"
"Break through the new dike!"
"And flood the koog? What devil ordered you to do that?"
"No, sir, no devil; the commissioner Ole Peters has been here; he gave the order!"
Anger flamed up into the rider's eyes: "Do you know me?" he shouted. "Where I am Ole Peters has no orders to give! Away with you! Back to your places where I left you."
And as they hesitated he dashed into the group with his horse: "Away, to your own or the devil's grandmother!"
"Be careful, sir," shouted one of the group and struck at the madly careering animal with his spade; but a kick from the horse knocked the spade from his hand, another fell to the ground. At that moment there suddenly arose a shriek from the rest of the group, a shriek such as only deathly terror wrests from the human throat; for a moment all, even the dikegrave and the horse, stood as if paralyzed; only one of the laborers had extended his arm like a sign-post; he pointed to the northwest corner of the two dikes, where the new one ran up to the old one. Only the raging of the wind and the surging of the water could be heard. Hauke turned in his saddle: what was that there? His eyes grew large: "By God! A breach! A breach in the old dike!"
"Your fault, dikegrave," shouted a voice from the group. "Your fault! Take it with you before God's throne!"
Hauke's face, first red with anger, had grown pale as death; the moon which shone on it could not make it whiter; his arms hung limp, he scarcely knew that he held the rein. But that too only lasted for a second; already he drew himself up, a hard groan broke from his mouth; then dumbly he turned his horse and with a snort it raced away with him to the east along the dike. The rider's glance flew sharply in all directions; thoughts were whirling in his head: What blame had he to bear before God's throne? The break through the new dike—perhaps they would have accomplished it if he had not called "stop!" But—there was another thing and his heart grew hot, he knew it only too well—the summer before, if only Ole Peters' evil mouth had not held him back then—that was where it lay! He alone had recognized the weakness of the old dike; he should have pushed on the new work in spite of everything: "Lord God, I confess it," he cried out suddenly aloud into the storm. "I have discharged my office badly."
At his left, close to his horse's hoofs, raged the sea; before him, now in complete darkness, lay the old koog with its mounds and homes; the moon's pale light on the sky had disappeared entirely; only at one spot did light shine through the darkness. And something like comfort crept into the man's heart; it must be shining over from his own house, it seemed to him like a message from his wife and child. Thank God, they were safe on the high mound! The others, certainly, they were already in the upland village; more light glimmered from there than he had ever seen before; yes, even high up in the air, probably from the church-tower, light shone out into the night. "They will all have gone away," said Hauke to himself; "to be sure, on more than one mound a house will lie in ruins, bad years will come for the flooded fens; drains and sluices to be repaired! We must bear it and I will help, those too who have done me harm; only, Lord, my God, be merciful to us men!"
He turned his eyes to the side, towards the new koog; about it foamed the sea; but in it lay the peace of night. Involuntarily triumphant rejoicing rose in the rider's breast: "The Hauke-Haien-Dike, it must stand; it will hold after more than a hundred years!"
A roar like thunder at his feet roused him from these dreams; the white horse did not want to go on. What was that? The horse jumped back and he felt how a piece of the dike in front of him plunged down into the depths. He opened his eyes wide and shook off all meditation: he had stopped close to the old dike, the horse's front feet had been on it. Involuntarily he jerked the horse back; at that moment the last veiling of clouds swept from the moon and the mild planet illumined the horror that seething and hissing rushed down before him into the old koog.
Hauke stared at it senselessly; it was a deluge, come to swallow up man and beast. Then a light shone again into his eyes; it was the same one that he had seen before; it was still burning on his mound; and now as, encouraged, he looked down into the koog he perceived that behind theconfusing whirl that dashed down clamorously before him, only a breadth of about a hundred feet was inundated; beyond that he could clearly distinguish the way that led up from the koog. He saw still more: a carriage, no, a two-wheeled gig came driving madly up towards the dike; a woman, yes, and a child too, were sitting in it. And now—was not that the shrill bark of a little dog that was borne by on the wind? Almighty God! It was his wife, his child! They were already coming quite close and the foaming mass of water was rushing towards them. A shriek, a shriek of desperation broke from the rider's breast: "Elke!" he shouted; "Elke! Back! Back!"
But wind and sea were not merciful, their raging tossed his words away; only the wind had caught his cloak and nearly flung him from his horse; and the approaching vehicle flew on steadily towards the rushing flood. As he looked he saw his wife stretch out her arms as if up towards him: had she recognized him? Had longing, had deathly anxiety about him driven her out of her secure house? And now—was she shouting a last word to him? These questions shot through his mind; they remained unanswered: all words from her to him, from him to her were lost; only an uproar as if the world were coming to an end filled their ears and excluded all other sounds.
"My child! Oh Elke, Oh faithful Elke!" cried Hauke out into the storm. Another large piece of the dike in front of him gave way and thunderingly the sea plunged in after it; once more he saw below the horse's head the wheels of the conveyance rise up out of the chaotic horror and then disappear in a whirl. The fixed eyes of the rider who stood so solitary on the dike saw nothing further. "The end!" he said softly to himself; then he rode to the edge of the abyss where, below him, the waters rushing uncannily were beginning to flood his home village; he still saw the light shining from his house; he felt that the soul had gone out of it. He raised himself high in the saddle and drove his spurs into the white horse's flanks; the animal reared and nearly fell over backwards; but theman's strength forced it down again. "Forward!" he cried once more as he had so often urged it on to a steady ride. "Take me, God; spare the others!"
Another pressure of the spurs; a shriek from the white horse that rose above the gale and the roar of the waves; then from the plunging stream below a dull splash, a brief struggle.
The moon looked down from above and illumined the scene; but on the dike beneath there was no longer any life save that of the savage waters which soon had almost completely covered the old koog. But still the mound where stood Hauke Haien's home rose up out of the swelling flood, the light still shone from there; and from the upland where the houses gradually grew dark, the solitary light from the church steeple threw its wavering beams across the seething waves.
The narrator ceased; I reached out for the filled glass that had long been standing before me; but I did not put it to my mouth; my hand remained lying on the table.
"That is the story of Hauke Haien," my host began again, "as I had to tell it according to my best knowledge. Our dikegrave's housekeeper, of course, would have made another tale; for this too people have to report: after the flood the white skeleton of the horse was to be seen again in the moonlight on Jevershallig as before; everyone in the village believed he saw it. So much is certain: Hauke Haien with his wife and child went down in that flood; I have not been able to find even their graves up in the churchyard; the dead bodies were undoubtedly carried back through the breach by the receding water out to sea, at the bottom of which they gradually were dissolved into their original component parts—thus they had peace from men. But the Hauke Haien Dike still stands now after a hundred years, and tomorrow if you ride to town and don't mind going half an hour out of your way you will have it beneath your horse's hoofs.
"The thanks Jewe Manners once promised the builder that the grandchildren should give have not come, as you have seen; for thus it is, sir: they gave Socrates poison to drink and our Lord Jesus Christ they nailed to the cross! It is not so easy to do such things as that any longer; but—to make a saint of a man of violence or a malicious bull-necked priest, or to make a ghost or a phantom of night of an able fellow just because he is a whole head above the rest of us—that can be done any day."
When the earnest little man had said that he got up and listened at the window. "It is different out there now," he said, and drew the woolen curtain back; it was bright moonlight. "See," he continued, "there are the commissioners coming back, but they are separating, they are going home; there must have been a break over on the other side; the water has fallen."
I looked out beside him; the windows upstairs, where we were, lay above the edge of the dike; it was as he had said. I took my glass and finished it: "I thank you for this evening," I said; "I think we can sleep in peace!"
"That we can," replied the little man; "I wish you a good night's sleep from my heart!"
In going down I met the dikegrave below in the hall; he wanted to take home with him a map that he had left in the tap-room. "It's all over," he said. "But our schoolmaster has told you a story of his own, I suppose; he belongs to the rationalists!"
"He seems to be a sensible man."
"Oh yes, certainly; but you can't mistrust your own eyes after all. And over on the other side, just as I said it would be, the dike is broken!"
I shrugged my shoulders: "We will have to take counsel with our pillows about that! Good night, dikegrave!"
He laughed. "Good night!"
The next morning, in the most golden of sunlights, which had risen on a wide devastation, I rode along the Hauke Haien Dike down to the town.