Undine
within that fearful wood, what will become of her? Perhaps it was all
owing to her sportive and wayward spirit, because I would give her no
account of my adventures there. And now the stream is rolling between
us, she may be weeping alone on the other side in the midst of spectral
horrors!”
A shuddering groan escaped him; and clambering over some stones and
trunks of overthrown pines, in order to step into the impetuous current,
he resolved, either by wading or swimming, to seek the wanderer on the
further shore. He felt, it is true, all the dread and shrinking awe
creeping over him which he had already suffered by daylight among the
now tossing and roaring branches of the forest. More than all, a tall
man in white, whom he knew but too well, met his view, as he stood
grinning and nodding on the grass beyond the water. But even monstrous
forms like this only impelled him to cross over toward them, when the
thought rushed upon him that Undine might be there alone and in the
agony of death.
He had already grasped a strong branch of a pine, and stood supporting
himself upon it in the whirling current, against which he could
with difficulty keep himself erect; but he advanced deeper in with a
courageous spirit. That instant a gentle voice of warning cried near
him, “Do not venture, do not venture!--that OLD MAN, the STREAM, is too
full of tricks to be trusted!” He knew the soft tones of the voice; and
while he stood as it were entranced beneath the shadows which had now
duskily veiled the moon, his head swam with the swelling and rolling
of the waves as he saw them momentarily rising above his knee. Still he
disdained the thought of giving up his purpose.
“If you are not really there, if you are merely gambolling round me like
a mist, may I, too, bid farewell to life, and become a shadow like you,
dear, dear Undine!” Thus calling aloud, he again moved deeper into
the stream. “Look round you--ah, pray look round you, beautiful young
stranger! why rush on death so madly?” cried the voice a second time
close by him; and looking on one side he perceived, by the light of
the moon, again cloudless, a little island formed by the flood; and
crouching upon its flowery turf, beneath the branches of embowering
trees, he saw the smiling and lovely Undine.
O how much more gladly than before the young man now plied his sturdy
staff! A few steps, and he had crossed the flood that was rushing
between himself and the maiden; and he stood near her on the little spot
of greensward in security, protected by the old trees. Undine half rose,
and she threw her arms around his neck to draw him gently down upon the
soft seat by her side.
“Here you shall tell me your story, my beautiful friend,” she breathed
in a low whisper; “here the cross old people cannot disturb us; and,
besides, our roof of leaves here will make quite as good a shelter as
their poor cottage.”
“It is heaven itself,” cried Huldbrand; and folding her in his arms, he
kissed the lovely girl with fervour.
The old fisherman, meantime, had come to the margin of the stream, and
he shouted across, “Why, how is this, sir knight! I received you with
the welcome which one true-hearted man gives to another; and now you
sit there caressing my foster-child in secret, while you suffer me in my
anxiety to wander through the night in quest of her.”
“Not till this moment did I find her myself, old father,” cried the
knight across the water.
“So much the better,” said the fisherman, “but now make haste, and bring
her over to me upon firm ground.”
To this, however, Undine would by no means consent. She declared
that she would rather enter the wild forest itself with the beautiful
stranger, than return to the cottage where she was so thwarted in her
wishes, and from which the knight would soon or late go away. Then,
throwing her arms round Huldbrand, she sang the following verse with the
warbling sweetness of a bird:
“A rill would leave its misty vale,
And fortunes wild explore,
Weary at length it reached the main,
And sought its vale no more.”
The old fisherman wept bitterly at her song, but his emotion seemed to
awaken little or no sympathy in her. She kissed and caressed her new
friend, who at last said to her: “Undine, if the distress of the old man
does not touch your heart, it cannot but move mine. We ought to return
to him.”
She opened her large blue eyes upon him in amazement, and spoke at last
with a slow and doubtful accent, “If you think so, it is well, all is
right to me which you think right. But the old man over there must first
give me his promise that he will allow you, without objection, to
relate what you saw in the wood, and--well, other things will settle
themselves.”
“Come--only come!” cried the fisherman to her, unable to utter another
word. At the same time he stretched his arms wide over the current
towards her, and to give her assurance that he would do what she
required, nodded his head. This motion caused his white hair to fall
strangely over his face, and Huldbrand could not but remember the
nodding white man of the forest. Without allowing anything, however, to
produce in him the least confusion, the young knight took the beautiful
girl in his arms, and bore her across the narrow channel which the
stream had torn away between her little island and the solid shore.
The old man fell upon Undine’s neck, and found it impossible either to
express his joy or to kiss her enough; even the ancient dame came up and
embraced the recovered girl most cordially. Every word of censure was
carefully avoided; the more so, indeed, as even Undine, forgetting her
waywardness, almost overwhelmed her foster-parents with caresses and the
prattle of tenderness.
When at length the excess of their joy at recovering their child had
subsided, morning had already dawned, shining upon the waters of the
lake; the tempest had become hushed, the small birds sung merrily on the
moist branches.
As Undine now insisted upon hearing the recital of the knight’s promised
adventures, the aged couple readily agreed to her wish. Breakfast was
brought out beneath the trees which stood behind the cottage toward the
lake on the north, and they sat down to it with contented hearts;
Undine at the knight’s feet on the grass. These arrangements being made,
Huldbrand began his story in the following manner:--
“It is now about eight days since I rode into the free imperial city
which lies yonder on the farther side of the forest. Soon after my
arrival a splendid tournament and running at the ring took place there,
and I spared neither my horse nor my lance in the encounters.
“Once while I was pausing at the lists to rest from the brisk exercise,
and was handing back my helmet to one of my attendants, a female figure
of extraordinary beauty caught my attention, as, most magnificently
attired, she stood looking on at one of the balconies. I learned, on
making inquiry of a person near me, that the name of the young lady
was Bertalda, and that she was a foster-daughter of one of the powerful
dukes of this country. She too, I observed, was gazing at me, and the
consequences were such as we young knights are wont to experience;
whatever success in riding I might have had before, I was now favoured
with still better fortune. That evening I was Bertalda’s partner in the
dance, and I enjoyed the same distinction during the remainder of the
festival.”
A sharp pain in his left hand, as it hung carelessly beside him, here
interrupted Huldbrand’s relation, and drew his eye to the part affected.
Undine had fastened her pearly teeth, and not without some keenness
too, upon one of his fingers, appearing at the same time very gloomy
and displeased. On a sudden, however, she looked up in his eyes with an
expression of tender melancholy, and whispered almost inaudibly,--
“It is all your own fault.”
She then covered her face; and the knight, strangely embarrassed and
thoughtful, went on with his story.
“This lady, Bertalda, of whom I spoke, is of a proud and wayward spirit.
The second day I saw her she pleased me by no means so much as she
had the first, and the third day still less. But I continued about her
because she showed me more favour than she did any other knight, and
it so happened that I playfully asked her to give me one of her gloves.
‘When you have entered the haunted forest all alone,’ said she; ‘when
you have explored its wonders, and brought me a full account of them,
the glove is yours.’ As to getting her glove, it was of no importance
to me whatever, but the word had been spoken, and no honourable knight
would permit himself to be urged to such a proof of valour a second
time.”
“I thought,” said Undine, interrupting him, “that she loved you.”
“It did appear so,” replied Huldbrand.
“Well!” exclaimed the maiden, laughing, “this is beyond belief; she must
be very stupid. To drive from her one who was dear to her! And worse
than all, into that ill-omened wood! The wood and its mysteries, for all
I should have cared, might have waited long enough.”
“Yesterday morning, then,” pursued the knight, smiling kindly upon
Undine, “I set out from the city, my enterprise before me. The early
light lay rich upon the verdant turf. It shone so rosy on the slender
boles of the trees, and there was so merry a whispering among the
leaves, that in my heart I could not but laugh at people who feared
meeting anything to terrify them in a spot so delicious. ‘I shall soon
pass through the forest, and as speedily return,’ I said to myself, in
the overflow of joyous feeling, and ere I was well aware, I had entered
deep among the green shades, while of the plain that lay behind me I was
no longer able to catch a glimpse.
“Then the conviction for the first time impressed me, that in a forest
of so great extent I might very easily become bewildered, and that this,
perhaps, might be the only danger which was likely to threaten those
who explored its recesses. So I made a halt, and turned myself in the
direction of the sun, which had meantime risen somewhat higher, and
while I was looking up to observe it, I saw something black among the
boughs of a lofty oak. My first thought was, ‘It is a bear!’ and I
grasped my weapon. The object then accosted me from above in a human
voice, but in a tone most harsh and hideous: ‘If I, overhead here, do
not gnaw off these dry branches, Sir Noodle, what shall we have to roast
you with when midnight comes?’ And with that it grinned, and made such a
rattling with the branches that my courser became mad with affright,
and rushed furiously forward with me before I had time to see distinctly
what sort of a devil’s beast it was.”
“You must not speak so,” said the old fisherman, crossing himself. His
wife did the same, without saying a word, and Undine, while her eye
sparkled with delight, looked at the knight and said, “The best of the
story is, however, that as yet they have not roasted you! Go on, now,
you beautiful knight.”
The knight then went on with his adventures. “My horse was so wild, that
he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees. He was
dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent straining of
his muscles. Still he refused to slacken his career. At last, altogether
beyond my control, he took his course directly up a stony steep, when
suddenly a tall white man flashed before me, and threw himself athwart
the way my mad steed was taking. At this apparition he shuddered with
new affright, and stopped trembling. I took this chance of recovering my
command of him, and now for the first time perceived that my deliverer,
so far from being a white man, was only a brook of silver brightness,
foaming near me in its descent from the hill, while it crossed and