Undine
“Wherefore should we?” replied the old man. “It would be a sin were I
to suffer you, all alone, to search after the foolish girl amid the
lonesomeness of night; and my old limbs would fail to carry me to this
wild rover, even if I knew to what place she has betaken herself.”
“Still we ought at least to call after her, and beg her to return,” said
Huldbrand; and he began to call in tones of earnest entreaty, “Undine!
Undine! come back, come back!”
The old man shook his head, and said, “All your shouting, however loud
and long, will be of no avail; you know not as yet, sir knight, how
self-willed the little thing is.” But still, even hoping against hope,
he could not himself cease calling out every minute, amid the gloom of
night, “Undine! ah, dear Undine! I beseech you, pray come back--only
this once.”
It turned out, however, exactly as the fisherman had said. No Undine
could they hear or see; and as the old man would on no account consent
that Huldbrand should go in quest of the fugitive, they were both
obliged at last to return into the cottage. There they found the fire
on the hearth almost gone out, and the mistress of the house, who took
Undine’s flight and danger far less to heart than her husband, had
already gone to rest. The old man blew up the coals, put on dry wood,
and by the firelight hunted for a flask of wine, which he brought and
set between himself and his guest.
“You, sir knight, as well as I,” said he, “are anxious on the silly
girl’s account; and it would be better, I think, to spend part of the
night in chatting and drinking, than keep turning and turning on our
rush-mats, and trying in vain to sleep. What is your opinion?”
Huldbrand was well pleased with the plan; the fisherman pressed him to
take the empty seat of honour, its late occupant having now left it for
her couch; and they relished their beverage and enjoyed their chat as
two such good men and true ever ought to do. To be sure, whenever the
slightest thing moved before the windows, or at times when even nothing
was moving, one of them would look up and exclaim, “Here she comes!”
Then would they continue silent a few moments, and afterward, when
nothing appeared, would shake their heads, breathe out a sigh, and go on
with their talk.
But, as neither could think of anything but Undine, the best plan they
could devise was, that the old fisherman should relate, and the knight
should hear, in what manner Undine had come to the cottage. So the
fisherman began as follows:
“It is now about fifteen years since I one day crossed the wild forest
with fish for the city market. My wife had remained at home as she was
wont to do; and at this time for a reason of more than common interest,
for although we were beginning to feel the advances of age, God had
bestowed upon us an infant of wonderful beauty. It was a little girl;
and we already began to ask ourselves the question, whether we ought
not, for the advantage of the new-comer, to quit our solitude, and, the
better to bring up this precious gift of Heaven, to remove to some more
inhabited place. Poor people, to be sure, cannot in these cases do all
you may think they ought, sir knight; but we must all do what we can.
“Well, I went on my way, and this affair would keep running in my head.
This slip of land was most dear to me, and I trembled when, amidst
the bustle and broils of the city, I thought to myself, ‘In a scene of
tumult like this, or at least in one not much more quiet, I must soon
take up my abode.’ But I did not for this murmur against our good God;
on the contrary, I praised Him in silence for the new-born babe. I
should also speak an untruth, were I to say that anything befell me,
either on my passage through the forest to the city, or on my returning
homeward, that gave me more alarm than usual, as at that time I had
never seen any appearance there which could terrify or annoy me. The
Lord was ever with me in those awful shades.”
Thus speaking he took his cap reverently from his bald head, and
continued to sit for a considerable time in devout thought. He then
covered himself again, and went on with his relation.
“On this side the forest, alas! it was on this side, that woe burst upon
me. My wife came wildly to meet me, clad in mourning apparel, and her
eyes streaming with tears. ‘Gracious God!’ I cried, ‘where’s our child?
Speak!’
“‘With Him on whom you have called, dear husband,’ she answered, and we
now entered the cottage together, weeping in silence. I looked for the
little corpse, almost fearing to find what I was seeking; and then it
was I first learnt how all had happened.
“My wife had taken the little one in her arms, and walked out to the
shore of the lake. She there sat down by its very brink; and while she
was playing with the infant, as free from all fear as she was full
of delight, it bent forward on a sudden, as if seeing something very
beautiful in the water. My wife saw her laugh, the dear angel, and try
to catch the image in her tiny hands; but in a moment--with a motion
swifter than sight--she sprang from her mother’s arms, and sank in the
lake, the watery glass into which she had been gazing. I searched
for our lost darling again and again; but it was all in vain; I could
nowhere find the least trace of her.
“The same evening we childless parents were sitting together by our
cottage hearth. We had no desire to talk, even if our tears would have
permitted us. As we thus sat in mournful stillness, gazing into the
fire, all at once we heard something without,--a slight rustling at the
door. The door flew open, and we saw a little girl, three or four years
old, and more beautiful than I can say, standing on the threshold,
richly dressed, and smiling upon us. We were struck dumb with
astonishment, and I knew not for a time whether the tiny form were a
real human being, or a mere mockery of enchantment. But I soon perceived
water dripping from her golden hair and rich garments, and that the
pretty child had been lying in the water, and stood in immediate need of
our help.
“‘Wife,’ said I, ‘no one has been able to save our child for us; but let
us do for others what would have made us so blessed could any one have
done it for us.’
“We undressed the little thing, put her to bed, and gave her something
to drink; at all this she spoke not a word, but only turned her eyes
upon us--eyes blue and bright as sea or sky--and continued looking at us
with a smile.
“Next morning we had no reason to fear that she had received any other
harm than her wetting, and I now asked her about her parents, and how
she could have come to us. But the account she gave was both confused
and incredible. She must surely have been born far from here, not only
because I have been unable for these fifteen years to learn anything
of her birth, but because she then said, and at times continues to say,
many things of so very singular a nature, that we neither of us know,
after all, whether she may not have dropped among us from the moon; for
her talk runs upon golden castles, crystal domes, and Heaven knows what
extravagances beside. What, however, she related with most distinctness
was this: that while she was once taking a sail with her mother on the
great lake, she fell out of the boat into the water; and that when she
first recovered her senses, she was here under our trees, where the gay
scenes of the shore filled her with delight.
“We now had another care weighing upon our minds, and one that caused us
no small perplexity and uneasiness. We of course very soon determined
to keep and bring up the child we had found, in place of our own darling
that had been drowned; but who could tell us whether she had been
baptized or not? She herself could give us no light on the subject. When
we asked her the question, she commonly made answer, that she well knew
she was created for God’s praise and glory, and that she was willing to
let us do with her all that might promote His glory and praise.
“My wife and I reasoned in this way: ‘If she has not been baptized,
there can be no use in putting off the ceremony; and if she has been, it
still is better to have too much of a good thing than too little.’
“Taking this view of our difficulty, we now endeavoured to hit upon a
good name for the child, since, while she remained without one, we were
often at a loss, in our familiar talk, to know what to call her. We at
length agreed that Dorothea would be most suitable for her, as I had
somewhere heard it said that this name signified a gift of God, and
surely she had been sent to us by Providence as a gift, to comfort us
in our misery. She, on the contrary, would not so much as hear Dorothea
mentioned; she insisted, that as she had been named Undine by her
parents, Undine she ought still to be called. It now occurred to me that
this was a heathenish name, to be found in no calendar, and I resolved
to ask the advice of a priest in the city. He would not listen to the
name of Undine; and yielding to my urgent request, he came with me
through the enchanted forest in order to perform the rite of baptism
here in my cottage.
“The little maid stood before us so prettily adorned, and with such an
air of gracefulness, that the heart of the priest softened at once in
her presence; and she coaxed him so sweetly, and jested with him so
merrily, that he at last remembered nothing of his many objections to
the name of Undine.
“Thus, then, was she baptized Undine; and during the holy ceremony she
behaved with great propriety and gentleness, wild and wayward as at
other times she invariably was; for in this my wife was quite right,
when she mentioned the anxiety the child has occasioned us. If I should
relate to you--”
At this moment the knight interrupted the fisherman, to direct his
attention to a deep sound as of a rushing flood, which had caught his
ear during the talk of the old man. And now the waters came pouring on
with redoubled fury before the cottage-windows. Both sprang to the door.
There they saw, by the light of the now risen moon, the brook which
issued from the wood rushing wildly over its banks, and whirling onward
with it both stones and branches of trees in its rapid course. The
storm, as if awakened by the uproar, burst forth from the clouds, whose
immense masses of vapour coursed over the moon with the swiftness of
thought; the lake roared beneath the wind that swept the foam from its
waves; while the trees of this narrow peninsula groaned from root to
topmost branch as they bowed and swung above the torrent.
“Undine! in God’s name, Undine!” cried the two men in an agony. No
answer was returned. And now, regardless of everything else, they
hurried from the cottage, one in this direction, the other in that,
searching and calling.
CHAPTER 2
The longer Huldbrand sought Undine beneath the shades of night, and
failed to find her, the more anxious and confused he became. The
impression that she was a mere phantom of the forest gained a new
ascendency over him; indeed, amid the howling of the waves and the
tempest, the crashing of the trees, and the entire change of the once
so peaceful and beautiful scene, he was tempted to view the whole
peninsula, together with the cottage and its inhabitants, as little
more than some mockery of his senses. But still he heard afar off the
fisherman’s anxious and incessant shouting, “Undine!” and also his aged
wife, who was praying and singing psalms.
At length, when he drew near to the brook, which had overflowed its
banks, he perceived by the moonlight, that it had taken its wild course
directly in front of the haunted forest, so as to change the peninsula
into an island.
“Merciful God!” he breathed to himself, “if Undine has ventured a step