The cavalier smiled, and said, “Yes, yes, Master Martin, I am your journeyman Conrad. You must pardon me for having given you that nasty wound. By rights, dear master, I ought to have sent you to kingdom come; you must see that yourself—however, things have all turned out differently.”
Master Martin, in some confusion, answered that he “thought it was just as well that he had not been sent to ‘ kingdom come,’ ” and that he hadn’t much minded the little bit of a cut with the broad-axe.
As Master Martin and his new guests now entered the chamber where the bridal pair were, with the others, everybody acclaimed the beauty of the lady, for she was so exactly like the bride that she might have been her twin sister. The cavalier went up to the bride courteously, saying, “Beautiful Rosa, I hope you will permit Conrad to be present at your wedding. You are no longer vexed with the wild thoughtless fellow who so nearly cost you a great sorrow? ”
As the bride, the bridegroom, and Master Martin looked from one to another in utter perplexity, the old Baron cried out, “ Well, well! suppose I must help you out of your dream. This is my son, Conrad, and there is his beautiful wife, whose name is Rosa, the same as the bride’s. Remember, Master Martin, our conversation, when I asked you if you would refuse to give me your Rosa even to my son. It had a special purpose. The boy was head over heels in love with your Rosa. He persuaded me to throw all consideration to the winds, and agree to act as his mediator—his go-between. But when I told him how you had shown me the door, he went and sneaked into your service in the most foolish way, as a cooper, to gain Rosa’s heart, with the view, I suppose, of carrying her off from you. Well! you cured him with that swinging blow you gave him on the back, and thanks to you for that, inasmuch as he has found a noble lady, who may perhaps be really the Rosa he had in his heart from the beginning.”
Meanwhile the lady had saluted the bride with the gentlest courtesy, and placed round her neck a rich pearl necklace, as a wedding gift.
“Look, dear Rosa,” she said, taking some withered flowers from among the fresh ones she wore on her breast, “these are the flowers which you gave to my Conrad as a prize of victory. He kept them faithfully till he saw me. But then he was false to you, and let me have them. Don’t be angry.”
Rosa, blushing deeply, and casting her eyes modestly down, answered, “Ah! my lady, how can you speak so? He never could have cared for me, certainly. You were his love alone; and because I happen to be called Rosa, too, and am—as these gentlemen say—a little like you, he made love to me, thinking all the time of you.”
The procession was about to start for the second time, when a young gentleman came in, dressed in the Italian fashion, all in slashed black velvet, with a fine gold chain and a collar of rich lace.
“Oh, my Reinhold,” cried Friedrich, and fell upon his neck; and the bride and Master Martin, too, rejoiced, and cried out, “Here is our beloved Reinhold!”
“Did I not say, my dearest friend,” said Reinhold, cordially returning the embraces, “that everything would turn out gloriously for you after all? Let me celebrate your wedding day with you. I have come a long distance to do so. And as an everlasting memorial, hang up in your house the picture which I painted for you, and which I have brought with me.” He called outside, and two servants came in carrying a large painting in a magnificent gold frame, representing Master Martin in his workshop with his journeymen Reinhold, Friedrich, and Conrad at work on the great cask, with Rosa just come in at the door. Everybody was amazed at the truthfulness and splendid colouring of this work of art.
“Ah,” said Friedrich, “that is your cooper’s masterpiece. Mine is downstairs. But I shall turn out another.”
“I know,” said Reinhold, “and you are a fortunate man; stick to your own art; very probably it is better suited to domesticity and the like than mine.”
At the wedding dinner Friedrich sat between the two Rosas, with Master Martin opposite to him, between Reinhold and Conrad. Paumgartner filled Friedrich’s goblet to the brim with noble wine, and drank to the health of Master Martin and his grand journeymen. The goblet went round, and first Baron von Spangenberg, and after him all the worthy masters, drained it to the same toast.
THE MINES OF FALUN
One bright, sunny day in July the whole population of Goethaborg was assembled at the harbour. A fine East Indiaman, happily returned from her long voyage, was lying at anchor, with her long, homeward-bound pennant and the Swedish flag fluttering gaily in the azure sky. Hundreds of boats, skiffs and other small craft, thronged with rejoicing seafolk, were going to and fro on the mirroring waters of the Goethaelf, and the cannon of Masthuggetorg thundered their far-echoing greeting out to sea. The gentlemen of the East India Company were walking up and down on the quay, reckoning up, with smiling faces, the plentiful profits they had netted, and rejoicing at the yearly increasing success of their hazardous enterprise and at the growing commercial importance of their good town of Goethaborg. For the same reasons everybody looked at these brave adventurers with pleasure and pride, and shared their rejoicing; for their success brought sap and vigour into the whole life of the place.
The crew of the East Indiaman, about a hundred strong, landed in a number of boats (gaily dressed with flags for the occasion) and prepared to hold their Hoensning. That is the name of the feast which the sailors hold on such occasions; it often goes on for several days. Musicians went before them in strange, gay dresses; some played lustily on violins, oboes, fifes and drums, while others sang merry songs. After them came the crew, walking two and two; some, with gay ribbons on their hats and jackets, waved fluttering streamers; others danced and skipped; and all of them shouted and cheered at the tops of their voices, till the sounds of merriment rang far and wide.
Thus the gay procession passed through the streets, and on to the suburb of Haga, where a feast was ready for them in a tavern.
Here the best of “Oel ” flowed in rivers and bumper after bumper was quaffed. Women joined them, as is always the case when sailors come home from a long voyage; dancing began, and wilder and wilder grew the revel, and louder and louder the din.
One sailor only—a slender, handsome lad of about twenty or a little less—had slipped away and was sitting alone outside, on the bench at the door of the tavern.
Two or three of his shipmates came out to him, and one of them cried, laughing loudly:
“Now then, Elis Froebom! are you going to be a donkey, as usual, and sit out here sulking instead of joining the sport like a man? Why, you might as well part company from the old ship altogether, and set sail on your own hook as fight shy of the Hoensning. One would think you were a regular long-shore landlubber, and had never been afloat on blue water. All the same, you’ve got as good pluck as any sailor that walks a deck—ay, and as cool and steady a head in a gale of wind as ever I came athwart; but you see, you can’t take your liquor! You’d sooner keep the ducats in your pocket than serve them out to the land-sharks ashore here. Here, lad! take a drink of that; or Naecken, the sea-devil, and all the Troll will be foul of your hawse before you know where you are!”
Elis Froebom jumped up quickly from the bench, glared angrily at his shipmates, took the tumbler—which was filled to the brim with brandy—and emptied it at a draught; then he said:
“You see I can take my glass with any man of you, Ivens; and you can ask the captain if I’m a good sailor or not; so stow away that long tongue of yours and sheer off! I don’t care about all this drink and row here; and what I’m doing out here by myself’s no business of yours; you have nothing to do with it.”
“All right, my hearty!” answered Ivens. “I know all about it. You’re one of these Nerica men—and a moony lot the whole cargo of them are too. They’re the sort that would rather sit and pipe their eye about nothing particular than take a good glass and see what the women at home are made of, after a twelve-month’s cruise! But just you belay there a bit. Steer full and bye, and stand off and on, and I’ll send somebody out to you that�
��ll cut you adrift in a pig’s whisper from that old bench where you’ve cast your anchor.”
They went, and presently a very pretty girl came out of the tavern and sat down beside the melancholy Elis, who was still sitting, silent and thoughtful, on the bench. From her dress and general appearance there could be no doubt as to her calling. But the life she was leading had not yet quite marred the delicacy of the wonderfully tender features of her beautiful face; there was no trace of repulsive boldness about the expression of her dark eyes—rather a quiet, melancholy longing.
“Aren’t you coming to join your shipmates, Elis?” she said. “Now that you’re back safe and sound, after all you’ve gone through on your long voyage, aren’t you glad to be home in the old country again?”
The girl spoke in a soft, gentle voice, putting her arms about him. Elis Froebom looked into her eyes as if roused from a dream. He took her hand; he pressed her to his breast. It was evident that what she had said had made its way to his heart.
“Ah!” he said, as if collecting his thoughts, “it’s no use talking about enjoying myself. I can’t join in all that riot and uproar; there’s no pleasure in it, for me. You go back. Sing and shout like the rest of them, if you can, and let gloomy, melancholy Elis stay out here by himself; he would only spoil your pleasure. Wait a minute, though! I like you, and I want you to think of me sometimes, when I’m away on the sea again.”
With that he took two shining ducats out of his pocket and a beautiful Indian handkerchief from his breast, and gave them to the girl. Her eyes streamed with tears; she rose, laid the money on the bench, and said:
“Oh, keep your ducats; they only make me miserable; but I’ll wear the handkerchief in remembrance of you. You’re not likely to find me next year when you hold your Hoensning in the Haga.”
And she crept slowly away down the street, with her hands pressed to her face.
Elis fell back into his gloomy reveries. At length, as the uproar in the tavern grew loud and wild, he cried:
“Oh, I wish I were deep, deep beneath the sea! for there’s nobody left in the wide, wide world that I can be happy with now!”
A deep, harsh voice spoke, close behind him: “You must have been most unfortunate, youngster, to wish to die, just when life should be opening before you.”
Elis looked round, and saw an old miner leaning with folded arms against the boarded wall of the tavern, looking down at him with a grave, penetrating stare.
As Elis looked at him, a feeling came to him as if some familiar figure had suddenly come into the deep, wild solitude in which he had thought himself lost. He pulled himself together, and told the old miner that his father had been a stout sailor, but had perished in the storm from which he himself had been saved as if by a miracle; that his two soldier brothers had died in battle, and he had supported his mother with the liberal pay he drew for sailing to the East Indies. He said he had been obliged to follow the life of a sailor, having been brought up to it from childhood, and it had been a great piece of good fortune that he got into the service of the East India Company. This voyage, the profits had been greater than usual, and each of the crew had been given a sum of money over and above his pay; so that he had hastened, in the highest spirits, with his pockets full of ducats, to the little cottage where his mother lived. But strange faces looked at him from the windows, and a young woman who opened the door to him at last told him in a cold, harsh tone that his mother had died three months earlier, and that he would find the few bits of things that were left, after paying the funeral expenses, waiting for him at the Town Hall.
The death of his mother broke his heart. He felt alone in the world—as much so as if he had been wrecked on some lonely reef, helpless and miserable. All his life at sea seemed to him to have been a mistaken, purposeless driving. And when he thought of his mother, perhaps badly looked after by strangers, he thought it a wrong and horrible thing that he should have gone to sea at all, instead of staying at home and taking proper care of her. His comrades had dragged him to the Hoensning in spite of himself, and he had thought too that the uproar and even the drink might deaden his pain; but instead of that, all the veins in his breast seemed to be bursting, and he felt as if he would bleed to death.
“Well,” said the old miner, “you’ll soon be off to sea again, Elis, and then your sorrow will soon be over. Old folks must die; there’s no help for that. She has only gone from this miserable world to a better.”
“Ah!” said Elis, “it is just because nobody believes in my sorrow, and that they all think me a fool to feel it—I say it’s that which is driving me out of the world! I won’t go to sea any more; I’m sick of living altogether. When the ship used to go flying along through the water, with all sails set, spreading like wings, the waves playing and dashing in exquisite music, and the wind singing in the rigging, my heart used to bound. Then I could hurrah and shout on deck like the best of them. And when I was on lookout duty of dark, quiet nights, I used to think about getting home, and how glad my dear old mother would be to have me back. I could enjoy a Hoensning like the rest of them then. And when I had shaken the ducats into mother’s lap and given her the handkerchiefs and all the other pretty things I had brought home, her eyes would sparkle with pleasure, and she would clap her hands for joy, and run out and in, and fetch me ale which she had kept for my homecoming. And when I sat with her evenings, I would tell her of all the strange folks I had seen, and their ways and customs, and about the wonderful things I had come across in my long voyages. This delighted her; and she would tell me of my father’s wonderful cruises in the far North, and lots of strange sailor’s yarns which I had heard a hundred times but never could hear too often. Ah! who will give me that happiness back again? What should I do among my shipmates? They would only laugh at me. Where should I find any heart for my work? There would be no purpose to it.”
“It gives me real satisfaction to listen to you, youngster,” said the old miner. “I have been observing you, without your knowledge, for the last hour or two, and have had my own enjoyment in doing so. All that you have said and done has shown me that you have a very thoughtful mind, and a character and nature pious, simple, and sincere. Heaven could have given you no more precious gifts; but you were never in all your born days in the least cut out for a sailor. How could the wild, unsettled sailor’s life suit a meditative, melancholy Neriker like you ?—for I can see that you come from Nerica by your features and whole appearance. You are right to say goodbye to that life forever. But you’re not going to walk about idle, with your hands in your pockets? Take my advice, Elis Froebom. Go to Falun, and be a miner. You are young and strong. You’ll soon be a first-class pick-hand; then a hewer; presently a surveyor, and so get higher and higher. You have a lot of ducats in your pocket. Take care of them; invest them; add more to them. Very likely you’ll soon get a ’Hemmans’ of your own, and then a share in the works. Take my advice, Elis Froebom; be a miner.”
The old man’s words caused him a sort of fear.
“What?” he cried. “Would you have me leave the bright, sunny sky that revives and refreshes me, and go down into that hell-like abyss, and dig and tunnel like a mole for metals and ores, merely to gain a few wretched ducats? Oh, never!”
“The usual thing,” said the old man. “People despise what they have had no chance of knowing anything about! As if all the constant wearing, petty anxieties inseparable from business up here on the surface, were nobler than the miner’s work. To his skill, knowledge, and untiring industry Nature lays bare her most secret treasures. You speak of gain with contempt, Elis Froebom. Well, there’s something infinitely higher in question here, perhaps: the mole tunnels the ground from blind instinct; but it may be, in the deepest depths, by the pale glimmer of the mine candle, men’s eyes get to see clearer, and at length, growing stronger and stronger, acquire the power of reading in the stones, the gems, and the minerals, the mirroring of secrets which are hidden above the clouds. You know nothing about mining, Elis.
Let me tell you a little.”
He sat down on the bench beside Elis, and began to describe the various processes minutely, placing all the details before him in the clearest and brightest colours. He talked of the mines of Falun, in which he said he had worked since he was a boy; he described the great main-shaft, with its dark brown sides; he told how incalculably rich the mine was in gems of the finest water. More and more vivid grew his words, more and more glowing his face. He went, in his description, through the different shafts as if they had been the alleys of some enchanted garden. The jewels came to life, the fossils began to move; the wondrous pyrosmalite and the almandine flashed in the light of the miner’s candles; the rock crystals glittered, and darted their rays.
Elis listened intently. The old man’s strange way of speaking of all these subterranean marvels as if he were standing in the midst of them impressed him deeply. His breast felt stifled; it seemed to him as if he were already down in these depths with the old man, and would never look upon the friendly light of day again. And yet it seemed as though the old man were opening to him a new and unknown world, to which he really properly belonged, and that he had somehow felt all the magic of that world in mystic forebodings since his boyhood.
“Elis Froebom,” said the old man at last, “I have laid before you all the glories of a calling for which Nature really destined you. Think the subject over well, and then act as your better judgment counsels you.”
He rose quickly from the bench and strode away without any goodbye to Elis, without looking at him even. Soon he disappeared from his sight.
The Best Tales of Hoffmann Page 42