Undine
when he reflected that nothing to give him alarm had ever befallen him
even in the forest; and moreover, that on this open neck of land the
evil spirit, it was likely, would be still less daring in the exercise
of his power. At the same time he prayed aloud with the most earnest
sincerity of devotion, repeating a passage of the Bible. This inspired
him with fresh courage, and soon perceiving the illusion, and the
strange mistake into which his imagination had betrayed him, he could
with difficulty refrain from laughing. The white nodding figure he had
seen became transformed, in the twinkling of an eye, to what in reality
it was, a small brook, long and familiarly known to him, which ran
foaming from the forest, and discharged itself into the lake.
But what had caused the startling sound was a knight arrayed in
sumptuous apparel, who from under the shadows of the trees came riding
toward the cottage. His doublet was violet embroidered with gold, and
his scarlet cloak hung gracefully over it; on his cap of burnished gold
waved red and violet-coloured plumes; and in his golden shoulder-belt
flashed a sword, richly ornamented, and extremely beautiful. The white
barb that bore the knight was more slenderly built than war-horses
usually are, and he touched the turf with a step so light and elastic
that the green and flowery carpet seemed hardly to receive the slightest
injury from his tread. The old fisherman, notwithstanding, did not feel
perfectly secure in his mind, although he was forced to believe that no
evil could be feared from an appearance so pleasing, and therefore, as
good manners dictated, he took off his hat on the knight’s coming near,
and quietly remained by the side of his nets.
When the stranger stopped, and asked whether he, with his horse, could
have shelter and entertainment there for the night, the fisherman
returned answer: “As to your horse, fair sir, I have no better stable
for him than this shady meadow, and no better provender than the grass
that is growing here. But with respect to yourself, you shall be welcome
to our humble cottage, and to the best supper and lodging we are able to
give you.”
The knight was well contented with this reception; and alighting from
his horse, which his host assisted him to relieve from saddle and
bridle, he let him hasten away to the fresh pasture, and thus spoke:
“Even had I found you less hospitable and kindly disposed, my worthy old
friend, you would still, I suspect, hardly have got rid of me to-day;
for here, I perceive, a broad lake lies before us, and as to riding back
into that wood of wonders, with the shades of evening deepening around
me, may Heaven in its grace preserve me from the thought.”
“Pray, not a word of the wood, or of returning into it!” said the
fisherman, and took his guest into the cottage.
There beside the hearth, from which a frugal fire was diffusing its
light through the clean twilight room, sat the fisherman’s aged wife in
a great chair. At the entrance of their noble guest, she rose and gave
him a courteous welcome, but sat down again in her seat of honour,
not making the slightest offer of it to the stranger. Upon this the
fisherman said with a smile:
“You must not be offended with her, young gentleman, because she has not
given up to you the best chair in the house; it is a custom among poor
people to look upon this as the privilege of the aged.”
“Why, husband!” cried the old lady, with a quiet smile, “where can your
wits be wandering? Our guest, to say the least of him, must belong to
a Christian country; and how is it possible, then, that so well-bred
a young man as he appears to be could dream of driving old people from
their chairs? Take a seat, my young master,” continued she, turning to
the knight; “there is still quite a snug little chair on the other side
of the room there, only be careful not to shove it about too roughly,
for one of its legs, I fear, is none of the firmest.”
The knight brought up the seat as carefully as she could desire, sat
down upon it good-humouredly, and it seemed to him almost as if he must
be somehow related to this little household, and have just returned home
from abroad.
These three worthy people now began to converse in the most friendly and
familiar manner. In relation to the forest, indeed, concerning which the
knight occasionally made some inquiries, the old man chose to know and
say but little; he was of opinion that slightly touching upon it at
this hour of twilight was most suitable and safe; but of the cares and
comforts of their home, and their business abroad, the aged couple
spoke more freely, and listened also with eager curiosity as the knight
recounted to them his travels, and how he had a castle near one of
the sources of the Danube, and that his name was Sir Huldbrand of
Ringstetten.
Already had the stranger, while they were in the midst of their talk,
heard at times a splash against the little low window, as if some one
were dashing water against it. The old man, every time he heard the
noise, knit his brows with vexation; but at last, when the whole sweep
of a shower came pouring like a torrent against the panes, and bubbling
through the decayed frame into the room, he started up indignant, rushed
to the window, and cried with a threatening voice--
“Undine! will you never leave off these fooleries?--not even to-day,
when we have a stranger knight with us in the cottage?”
All without now became still, only a low laugh was just audible, and
the fisherman said, as he came back to his seat, “You will have the
goodness, my honoured guest, to pardon this freak, and it may be a
multitude more; but she has no thought of evil or of any harm. This
mischievous Undine, to confess the truth, is our adopted daughter, and
she stoutly refuses to give over this frolicsome childishness of hers,
although she has already entered her eighteenth year. But in spite of
this, as I said before, she is at heart one of the very best children in
the world.”
“YOU may say so,” broke in the old lady, shaking her head; “you can give
a better account of her than I can. When you return home from fishing,
or from selling your fish in the city, you may think her frolics very
delightful, but to have her dancing about you the whole day long, and
never from morning to night to hear her speak one word of sense; and
then as she grows older, instead of having any help from her in the
family, to find her a continual cause of anxiety, lest her wild humours
should completely ruin us, that is quite another thing, and enough at
last to weary out the patience even of a saint.”
“Well, well,” replied the master of the house with a smile, “you have
your trials with Undine, and I have mine with the lake. The lake often
beats down my dams, and breaks the meshes of my nets, but for all that I
have a strong affection for it, and so have you, in spite of your mighty
crosses and vexations, for our graceful little child. Is it not true?”
“One cannot be very angry with her,” answered the old lady, as she gave
her husband an approving smile.
That instant the door flew open, and a fair girl, of wondrous beauty,
sprang laughing in, and said, “You have only been making a mock of me,
father; for where now is the guest you mentioned?”
The same moment, however, she perceived the knight also, and continued
standing before the young man in fixed astonishment. Huldbrand was
charmed with her graceful figure, and viewed her lovely features with
the more intense interest, as he imagined it was only her surprise that
allowed him the opportunity, and that she would soon turn away from his
gaze with increased bashfulness. But the event was the very reverse of
what he expected; for, after looking at him for a long while, she became
more confident, moved nearer, knelt down before him, and while she
played with a gold medal which he wore attached to a rich chain on his
breast, exclaimed,
“Why, you beautiful, you kind guest! how have you reached our poor
cottage at last? Have you been obliged for years and years to wander
about the world before you could catch one glimpse of our nook? Do you
come out of that wild forest, my beautiful knight?”
The old woman was so prompt in her reproof as to allow him no time to
answer. She commanded the maiden to rise, show better manners, and go to
her work. But Undine, without making any reply, drew a little footstool
near Huldbrand’s chair, sat down upon it with her netting, and said in a
gentle tone--
“I will work here.”
The old man did as parents are apt to do with children to whom they have
been over-indulgent. He affected to observe nothing of Undine’s strange
behaviour, and was beginning to talk about something else. But this the
maiden did not permit him to do. She broke in upon him, “I have asked
our kind guest from whence he has come among us, and he has not yet
answered me.”
“I come out of the forest, you lovely little vision,” Huldbrand
returned; and she spoke again:
“You must also tell me how you came to enter that forest, so feared and
shunned, and the marvellous adventures you met with in it; for there is
no escaping without something of this kind.”
Huldbrand felt a slight shudder on remembering what he had witnessed,
and looked involuntarily toward the window, for it seemed to him that
one of the strange shapes which had come upon him in the forest must be
there grinning in through the glass; but he discerned nothing except the
deep darkness of night, which had now enveloped the whole prospect. Upon
this he became more collected, and was just on the point of beginning
his account, when the old man thus interrupted him:
“Not so, sir knight; this is by no means a fit hour for such relations.”
But Undine, in a state of high excitement, sprang up from her little
stool and cried, placing herself directly before the fisherman: “He
shall NOT tell his story, father? he shall not? But it is my will:--he
shall!--stop him who may!”
Thus speaking, she stamped her little foot vehemently on the floor,
but all with an air of such comic and good-humoured simplicity, that
Huldbrand now found it quite as hard to withdraw his gaze from her wild
emotion as he had before from her gentleness and beauty. The old man,
on the contrary, burst out in unrestrained displeasure. He severely
reproved Undine for her disobedience and her unbecoming carriage towards
the stranger, and his good old wife joined him in harping on the same
string.
By these rebukes Undine was only excited the more. “If you want to
quarrel with me,” she cried, “and will not let me hear what I so much
desire, then sleep alone in your smoky old hut!” And swift as an arrow
she shot from the door, and vanished amid the darkness of the night.
Huldbrand and the fisherman sprang from their seats, and were rushing to
stop the angry girl; but before they could reach the cottage-door, she
had disappeared in the stormy darkness without, and no sound, not so
much even as that of her light footstep, betrayed the course she had
taken. Huldbrand threw a glance of inquiry towards his host; it almost
seemed to him as if the whole of the sweet apparition, which had so
suddenly plunged again amid the night, were no other than a continuation
of the wonderful forms that had just played their mad pranks with him in
the forest. But the old man muttered between his teeth,
“This is not the first time she has treated us in this manner. Now must
our hearts be filled with anxiety, and our eyes find no sleep for the
whole night; for who can assure us, in spite of her past escapes, that
she will not some time or other come to harm, if she thus continue out
in the dark and alone until daylight?”
“Then pray, for God’s sake, father, let us follow her,” cried Huldbrand
anxiously.