CHAPTER II.
THE MOURNER AND HIS COMPANION

Narrow footpath leads from the village to a solitary thatched cottage, only a small part of whose roof, just about the chimney, is covered with tiles. The house does not come in sight till you have climbed a good half-mile up the mountain. The path leads behind the church, – between hedges at first, then across open fields, where you hear the murmur of the pine-woods that cover the steep mountain-side. Behind this mountain, the Spannreute, rise still other peaks; but even this front slope is so steep that the harvest gathered on the upland meadows has to be brought down to the valley on sledges.

Along the footpath between the hedges two men were now walking, one behind the other. The one in front was a little old man, whose dress showed him to be a person of property. He carried a cane in his hand, with the tasselled string twisted about his wrist by way of precaution. His step was still firm; his face, a perfect mass of wrinkles, moved up and down as he mumbled lumps of white sugar, which he produced from time to time from his pocket. His sandy eyebrows were brushed out till they stood almost at right angles with his face, and from under them peered a pair of shrewd, light blue eyes. The young man who walked behind was tall and slender, with crape on his hat and on the sleeve of his long blue coat. He kept his face turned to the ground, and shook his head sadly as he walked. At last he stopped, and straightened himself up, bringing to view a fresh face, with light beard and blue eyes, whose lids were red with weeping.

"Uncle," he said, hoarsely. The sugar-eater turned round. "Uncle, you have gone far enough. Thank you heartily; but the way is long, and I would rather go home alone."

"Why?"

"I don't know why; but I feel it were better so."

"No, no; turn back with me."

"I am sorry not to oblige you, uncle; but I cannot, – I really cannot go to the inn just now. I am neither hungry nor thirsty; I don't know when I shall ever eat and drink again. It is a pity you should take this long walk for me."

"No, no; I will go home with you. I am not so hard-hearted as your mother tried to make you believe."

"My mother tried to make me believe no evil of you. She spoke nothing but good of any one, and especially against her relations she would hear no tales. 'To speak evil of a brother is to slander yourself,' she used to say."

"Yes, yes; she had plenty of proverbs. 'Marie Lenz used to say so and so,' is in every one's mouth. Nothing but good should be spoken of the dead, and in fact there can no evil be said of her."

The young man cast a sad glance at his uncle. He always managed to put a sting even into his kindliest words.

"How often she has said to me lately," continued the young man, "and how it pained me to hear her, 'Lenz, I have lived six years too long for you. You ought to have married at five-and-twenty; it will come harder now. You have grown too much used to my ways, and they cannot last.' I could not persuade her out of the idea. It imbittered her death-bed."

"She was right," said the sugar-eater. "She was too good-natured; self-willed she was also, but that was no matter. Her good-nature spoiled you. I did not mean to tell you so now, though; another time would be better. Come, do as I bid you, and don't be such a baby. You act as if you did not know which way to turn. It is all in the course of nature that your mother should die before you, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with in your treatment of her."

"No, thank God!"

"Show yourself a man, then, and stop crying and bawling. I never saw anybody cry in all my life as you did in the churchyard."

"I cannot tell you how I felt, uncle. I wept for my mother, but also for myself. When the Liederkranz sang the songs that I had always sung with them, and I had to stand there dumb and dead, I felt as if I were really dead, and they were singing at my grave and I could not join in."

"You are-" said the old man. He was about to add something, but choked it down and walked on. The little dog that was running in front looked up wonderingly in his master's face, as if he hardly recognized the look he saw there.

Presently the old man stopped. "I am going back," he said. "Only one word more with you. Take into your house none of your mother's relations whom afterwards you will have to send away. They will forget all your kindness, and only be vexed that it cannot continue. Neither give anything away, no matter who asks. If you are tempted to, go off somewhere for a week or so, and, when you come home, keep the keys to yourself. Now good by, and be a man!"

"Good by, uncle," said the young man, and went on towards his home. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, but knew at every step where he was. Every stone on the path was familiar to him. When at last he reached the house, he could hardly bring himself to cross the threshold.

How much had happened there! and what was to come next? He must learn to bear.

The old serving-woman sat in the kitchen with her apron over her head. "Is that you, Lenz?" she sobbed, as the young man passed her.

The room looked empty, yet everything was there. The work-bench with its five divisions for the five workmen stood before the unbroken row of windows; the tools hung on straps and nails round the wall; the clocks ticked; the doves cooed; yet all was so empty, so desolate and dead! The arm-chair stood with outspread arms, waiting. Lenz leaned on the back of it and wept bitterly. Then he got up and tried to go to her chamber. "It is impossible you are not there," he said, half aloud. The sound of his own voice startled him. He sank exhausted into the chair where his mother had so often rested.

At last he took courage and entered the deserted chamber.

"Have you not forgotten something that I ought to have sent after you?" he said again. With an inward shudder he opened his mother's chest, into which he had never looked. It seemed almost a sacrilege to look now, but he did. Perhaps she had left a word or a token for him. He found the christening presents of his dead brothers and sisters tied up in separate parcels and marked with their names; his own lay among them. There were some old coins, his mother's confirmation dress, her bridal wreath, – dried, but carefully preserved, – her garnet ornaments, and in a little box by itself, wrapped in five thicknesses of fine paper, a little white, velvety plant, labelled in his mother's handwriting. The son read at first under his breath, then half aloud, as if wishing to hear his mother's words, "This is a little plant Edelweiss-"

"Here is something to eat," suddenly cried a voice through the open door.

It was only old Franzl calling, but it startled Lenz like the voice of a spirit.

"Coming," he answered, shut the door hastily, bolted it, and restored everything carefully to its former place before going into the sitting-room, where old Franzl was indulging in many a solemn shake of the head at this mystery which she was not permitted to share.

CHAPTER III.
WORK AND BENEFACTION

The bailiff, Lenz's nearest neighbor, though not a very near one, had sent in food, as was the custom in that part of the country when a death occurred, in the supposition that the mourners might not have thought of preparing any. Moreover, during a funeral, and for three hours after, no fire was allowed to be kindled on the hearth.

The bailiff's daughter brought the food into the room herself.

"Thanks to you and your parents, Katharine. Take away the food; when I am hungry, I will eat; I cannot now," said Lenz.

"But you must try," said Franzl; "that is the custom; you must put something to your lips. Sit down, Katharine; you should always sit down when you visit a mourner, not keep standing. Young people nowadays don't know what the custom is. And you must say something, Katharine; you should talk to a mourner, not be dumb. Say something."

The sturdy, round-cheeked girl flushed crimson. "I can't," she stammered out, bursting into a passion of tears, and covering her face with her apron, as she became conscious that Lenz's eyes were fixed upon her.

"Don't cry," he said, soothingly. "Thank God every day that you still have your parents. There, I have tasted the soup."

"You must take something else," urged Franzl. He obeyed with an effort, and then rose from the table. The girl rose too. "Forgive me, Lenz," she said. "I ought to have comforted you, but I-I-"

"I know; thank you, Katharine. I can't talk much yet myself."

"Good by. Father says you must come and see us; he has a lame foot, and cannot come to you."

"I will see: I will come if I can."

When she was gone, Lenz walked up and down the room with outstretched hands, as seeking to grasp some form, but he found no one. His eye fell upon the tools, and was chiefly attracted by a file that hung on the wall by itself. A sudden idea seized him as he raised his hand to take it.

This file was his choicest heirloom. His father had used it constantly for forty-seven years, till his thumb had worn a groove in its maple-wood handle. "Who would believe," the old man was fond of saying, "that many years' work of a man's hand would wear a wooden handle like that?" The mother always exhibited this wonderful file to strangers as a curiosity.

The doctor down in the valley had a collection of old clocks and tools, and had often asked for this file to hang up in his cabinet; but the father never would give it. Since his death, the mother and son naturally set a great value on the heirloom. After the father's funeral, when mother and son were sitting quietly together at home, she said, "Now, Lenz, we have wept enough; we must bear our burden in silence. Take your father's file, and work. 'Work and pray while yet it is day,' runs the proverb. Be glad you have an honest trade, and do not need to brood over what is past. A thousand times has your father said, 'What a help it is to get up in the morning and find your work waiting. When I file, I file all the useless chips out of my brain; and when I hammer, I knock all heavy thoughts on the head, and away they go.'

"Those were my mother's words then, and they ring in my ears to-day. Would I could always be as sure of her counsel!"

Lenz set himself industriously to work. Without stood Franzl and Katharine. "I am glad you were the first to bring the food," said the old woman; "it is a good sign. Whoever brings the first morsel at such a time- But I have said nothing: no one shall say I had a hand in it. Only come back this evening, and be the one to bid him good night. If you bid him good night three times, something is sure to come of it. Hark! what is that? Saints in heaven, he is working now, on such a day as this! What a man! I have known him ever since he was a baby, but there is no telling what queer thing he will do. Yet he is so good! Don't tell he was working, will you? it might make people talk. Come yourself for the dishes this evening, and be composed, so that you can talk properly. You can generally use your tongue well enough."

Franzl was interrupted by Lenz's voice, calling from the door, "If any visitors come, Franzl, I can see none but Pilgrim. Are you still there, Katharine?"

"I am going this minute," said she, and ran down the hill.

Lenz returned to his seat, and worked without intermission, while Franzl as busily racked her brain to make out this extraordinary man, who, a moment before, was crying himself sick, and now sat quietly at work. It could not be from want of feeling, nor from avarice, but what could it mean?

"My old head is not wise enough," said Franzl. Her first impulse was to go to her mistress and ask what she could make of it; but she checked herself, and covered her face with her hands as she remembered the mother was dead. To Franzl's consternation, visitors began now to arrive, – various members of the Liederkranz, besides some of the older townspeople. In great embarrassment she turned them away, talking all the time as loud as if they were deaf. She would gladly have stopped their ears, if she could, to keep them from hearing Lenz at work. "If Pilgrim would only come," she thought. "Pilgrim can do anything with him; he would not mind taking the tools out of his hand." But no Pilgrim came. At last a happy thought struck her. There was no need of her staying at home. She would go a little way down the hill, beyond the sound of hammer and saw, and prevent visitors from coming up.

Lenz meanwhile was recovering composure and firmness over his work. When he left off, towards evening, he descended the hill, and, taking the path behind the houses, proceeded in the direction of his friend Pilgrim's. Halfway down he turned about as suddenly as if some one had called him; but all was still. Only the blackbird's ceaseless twittering was heard in the bushes, and the yellowhammer's monotonous whistle from the fresh pine-tops.