Undine
That day Undine laughed at them excessively, but they were not disposed
to join in her jests with the same gaiety as usual. Toward evening she
went out of the cottage, to escape, as she said, the sight of two such
long and tiresome faces.
While it was yet twilight, some appearances of a tempest seemed to be
again mustering in the sky, and the waves already heaved and roared
around them: the knight and the fisherman sprang to the door in terror,
to bring home the maiden, remembering the anguish of that night when
Huldbrand had first entered the cottage. But Undine met them at the same
moment, clapping her little hands in high glee.
“What will you give me,” she cried, “to provide you with wine? or
rather, you need not give me anything,” she continued; “for I am already
satisfied, if you look more cheerful, and are in better spirits, than
throughout this last most wearisome day. Only come with me; the forest
stream has driven ashore a cask; and I will be condemned to sleep
through a whole week, if it is not a wine-cask.”
The men followed her, and actually found, in a bushy cove of the shore,
a cask, which inspired them with as much joy as if they were sure it
contained the generous old wine for which they were thirsting. They
first of all, and with as much expedition as possible, rolled it toward
the cottage; for heavy clouds were again rising in the west, and they
could discern the waves of the lake in the fading light lifting their
white foaming heads, as if looking out for the rain, which threatened
every instant to pour upon them. Undine helped the men as much as she
was able; and as the shower, with a roar of wind, came suddenly sweeping
on in rapid pursuit, she raised her finger with a merry menace toward
the dark mass of clouds, and cried:
“You cloud, you cloud, have a care! beware how you wet us; we are some
way from shelter yet.”
The old man reproved her for this sally, as a sinful presumption;
but she laughed to herself softly, and no mischief came from her wild
behaviour. Nay more, what was beyond their expectation, they reached
their comfortable hearth unwet, with their prize secured; but the cask
had hardly been broached, and proved to contain wine of a remarkably
fine flavour, when the rain first poured down unrestrained from the
black cloud, the tempest raved through the tops of the trees, and swept
far over the billows of the deep.
Having immediately filled several bottles from the cask, which promised
them a supply for a long time, they drew round the glowing hearth; and,
comfortably secured from the tempest, they sat tasting the flavour of
their wine and bandying jests.
But the old fisherman suddenly became extremely grave, and said: “Ah,
great God! here we sit, rejoicing over this rich gift, while he to
whom it first belonged, and from whom it was wrested by the fury of the
stream, must there also, it is more than probable, have lost his life.”
“No such thing,” said Undine, smiling, as she filled the knight’s cup to
the brim.
But he exclaimed: “By my unsullied honour, old father, if I knew where
to find and rescue him, no fear of exposure to the night, nor any peril,
should deter me from making the attempt. At least, I can promise you
that if I again reach an inhabited country, I will find out the owner of
this wine or his heirs, and make double and triple reimbursement.”
The old man was gratified with this assurance; he gave the knight a nod
of approbation, and now drained his cup with an easier conscience and
more relish.
Undine, however, said to Huldbrand: “As to the repayment and your gold,
you may do whatever you like. But what you said about your venturing
out, and searching, and exposing yourself to danger, appears to me far
from wise. I should cry my very eyes out, should you perish in such a
wild attempt; and is it not true that you would prefer staying here with
me and the good wine?”
“Most assuredly,” answered Huldbrand, smiling.
“Then, you see,” replied Undine, “you spoke unwisely. For charity begins
at home; and why need we trouble ourselves about our neighbours?”
The mistress of the house turned away from her, sighing and shaking
her head; while the fisherman forgot his wonted indulgence toward the
graceful maiden, and thus rebuked her:
“That sounds exactly as if you had been brought up by heathens and
Turks;” and he finished his reproof by adding, “May God forgive both me
and you--unfeeling child!”
“Well, say what you will, that is what I think and feel,” replied
Undine, “whoever brought me up; and all your talking cannot help it.”
“Silence!” exclaimed the fisherman, in a voice of stern rebuke; and she,
who with all her wild spirit was extremely alive to fear, shrank from
him, moved close up to Huldbrand, trembling, and said very softly:
“Are you also angry, dear friend?”
The knight pressed her soft hand, and tenderly stroked her locks. He
was unable to utter a word, for his vexation, arising from the old man’s
severity towards Undine, closed his lips; and thus the two couples sat
opposite to each other, at once heated with anger and in embarrassed
silence.
In the midst of this stillness a low knocking at the door startled them
all; for there are times when a slight circumstance, coming unexpectedly
upon us, startles us like something supernatural. But there was the
further source of alarm, that the enchanted forest lay so near them, and
that their place of abode seemed at present inaccessible to any human
being. While they were looking upon one another in doubt, the knocking
was again heard, accompanied with a deep groan. The knight sprang to
seize his sword. But the old man said, in a low whisper:
“If it be what I fear it is, no weapon of yours can protect us.”
Undine in the meanwhile went to the door, and cried with the firm voice
of fearless displeasure: “Spirits of the earth! if mischief be your aim,
Kuhleborn shall teach you better manners.”
The terror of the rest was increased by this wild speech; they looked
fearfully upon the girl, and Huldbrand was just recovering presence
of mind enough to ask what she meant, when a voice reached them from
without:
“I am no spirit of the earth, though a spirit still in its earthly body.
You that are within the cottage there, if you fear God and would afford
me assistance, open your door to me.”
By the time these words were spoken, Undine had already opened it; and
the lamp throwing a strong light upon the stormy night, they perceived
an aged priest without, who stepped back in terror, when his eye fell on
the unexpected sight of a little damsel of such exquisite beauty. Well
might he think there must be magic in the wind and witchcraft at work,
when a form of such surpassing loveliness appeared at the door of so
humble a dwelling. So he lifted up his voice in prayer:
“Let all good spirits praise the Lord God!”
“I am no spectre,” said Undine, with a smile. “Do I look so very
frightful? And you see that I do not shrink from holy words. I too have
knowledge of God, and understand the duty of praising Him; every one, to
be sure, has his own way of doing this, for so He has created us. Come
in, father; you will find none but worthy people here.”
The holy man came bowing in, and cast round a glance of scrutiny,
wearing at the same time a very placid and venerable air. But water was
dropping from every fold of his dark garments, from his long white beard
and the white locks of his hair. The fisherman and the knight took him
to another apartment, and furnished him with a change of raiment, while
they gave his own clothes to the women to dry. The aged stranger thanked
them in a manner the most humble and courteous; but on the knight’s
offering him his splendid cloak to wrap round him, he could not be
persuaded to take it, but chose instead an old grey coat that belonged
to the fisherman.
They then returned to the common apartment. The mistress of the house
immediately offered her great chair to the priest, and continued urging
it upon him till she saw him fairly in possession of it. “You are old
and exhausted,” said she, “and are, moreover, a man of God.”
Undine shoved under the stranger’s feet her little stool, on which at
all other times she used to sit near to Huldbrand, and showed herself
most gentle and amiable towards the old man. Huldbrand whispered some
raillery in her ear, but she replied, gravely:
“He is a minister of that Being who created us all; and holy things are
not to be treated with lightness.”
The knight and the fisherman now refreshed the priest with food and
wine; and when he had somewhat recovered his strength and spirits, he
began to relate how he had the day before set out from his cloister,
which was situated far off beyond the great lake, in order to visit the
bishop, and acquaint him with the distress into which the cloister and
its tributary villages had fallen, owing to the extraordinary floods.
After a long and wearisome wandering, on account of the rise of the
waters, he had been this day compelled toward evening to procure the
aid of a couple of boatmen, and cross over an arm of the lake which had
burst its usual boundary.
“But hardly,” continued he, “had our small ferry-boat touched the waves,
when that furious tempest burst forth which is still raging over our
heads. It seemed as if the billows had been waiting our approach only to
rush on us with a madness the more wild. The oars were wrested from the
grasp of my men in an instant; and shivered by the resistless force,
they drove farther and farther out before us upon the waves. Unable to
direct our course, we yielded to the blind power of nature, and seemed
to fly over the surges toward your distant shore, which we already saw
looming through the mist and foam of the deep. Then it was at last that
our boat turned short from its course, and rocked with a motion that
became more wild and dizzy: I know not whether it was overset, or the
violence of the motion threw me overboard. In my agony and struggle at
the thought of a near and terrible death, the waves bore me onward, till
I was cast ashore here beneath the trees of your island.”
“Yes, an island!” cried the fisherman; “a short time ago it was only a
point of land. But now, since the forest stream and lake have become all
but mad, it appears to be entirely changed.”
“I observed something of it,” replied the priest, “as I stole along the
shore in the obscurity; and hearing nothing around me but a sort of wild
uproar, I perceived at last that the noise came from a point exactly
where a beaten footpath disappeared. I now caught the light in your
cottage, and ventured hither, where I cannot sufficiently thank my
Heavenly Father that, after preserving me from the waters, He has also
conducted me to such pious people as you are; and the more so, as it is
difficult to say whether I shall ever behold any other persons in this
world except you four.”
“What mean you by those words?” asked the fisherman.
“Can you tell me, then, how long this commotion of the elements will
last?” replied the priest. “I am old; the stream of my life may easily
sink into the ground and vanish before the overflowing of that forest
stream shall subside. And, indeed, it is not impossible that more and
more of the foaming waters may rush in between you and yonder forest,
until you are so far removed from the rest of the world, that your small
fishing-canoe may be incapable of passing over, and the inhabitants of
the continent entirely forget you in your old age amid the dissipation
and diversions of life.”
At this melancholy foreboding the old lady shrank back with a feeling of
alarm, crossed herself, and cried, “God forbid!”
But the fisherman looked upon her with a smile and said, “What a strange