last Jössl removed his pointed hat from his head and laid it by his side, and took out and replaced the jaunty feathers which testified his prowess in the holiday sport47, and finally cleared his throat to say, softly, —
“Is this not happiness, Aennerl? – what can we want more in this world? True, we work hard all day, but is not our toil repaid when we sit together thus, while the warm evening sun shines round us, and the blue heaven above and the green fields below smile on us, and we are together? Aennerl, shall we not be always happy together?”
They were the very words that orphan Aennerl had so often longed to hear her Jössl say. Something like them she had repeated to herself again and again, and wondered if the happy day would ever come when she should hear them from his own lips. Had he said them to her any day of her whole life before, how warmly would she have responded to them!
To-day, however, it was different. The rich peasant’s wife for whom the poor orphan worked had been harsh to her that day, and for the first time envious thoughts had found entrance into her mind, and discontent at her lowly lot.
So, instead of assenting warmly, she only said, —
“Of course it’s very nice, Jössl, but then it’s only for a little bit, you see. The hard toil lasts all day, nevertheless. Now to have a Hof48 of one’s own, like the one I work upon at Oberndorf, with plenty of cattle, and corn, and servants to work for you, that’s what I should call being happy! Sitting together in the sunset is all very well, but we might have that besides.”
The good, hard-working, thrifty, God-fearing Jössl looked aghast to hear his Aennerl speak so. Beyond his day’s wage honestly worked for, and the feather in his Trutzhut bravely contended for, and his beloved Aennerl wooed with tenderness and constancy – he had not a thought or a wish in the wide world. Hitherto her views had been the counterpart of his; now, for the first time, he perceived there was something had come between them, and he felt disappointed and estranged.
“If that’s your view, Aennerl girl, it isn’t the Goigner Jössl that will be able to make you happy,” replied the youth at length, coldly; “your best chance would be with the Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel,” he added, almost bitterly, as one who would say, Your case is desperate; you have no chance at all.
“What was that?” said Aennerl, suddenly starting. “Who can be working so late? Don’t you hear a pick go ‘click, clack’? Who can it be?”
“No one is working at this hour,” replied Jössl, in no mood to be pleased at the interruption. But as he spoke the bells of the villages around toned forth the Ave-Maria. Both folded their hands devoutly for the evening prayer; and in the still silence that ensued he could not deny that he heard the sound of the pick vigorously at work, and that, as it seemed, under the ground directly beneath their feet.
“It is the Bergmännlein – it must be the Bergmännlein himself!” exclaimed Aennerl, with excitement.
“Nonsense! what silly tales are you thinking of?” replied Jössl, inwardly reproaching himself for the light words he had just spoken suggesting the invocation of a superstition with which his honest, devout nature felt no sympathy; and, without letting the excited girl exert herself to catch the strange sounds further, he led her home.
Aennerl’s curiosity was roused, however, and was not to be so easily laid to rest.
The next evening Jössl’s work lay in a different direction, but no sooner had the hour of the evening rest arrived than he started on the road to Oberndorf, to see if he could meet his Aennerl coming home. But there was no Aennerl on the path; and he turned homewards with a heavy heart, fearing lest he had offended her, and that she was shunning him.
But Aennerl, whom the desire of being rich had overcome with all the force of a new passion, had been more absorbed on that last memorable evening by the idea of having heard the Bergmännlein at work amid the riches of the mines than with – what would have been so terrible a grief at any other time – having offended her faithful Jössl. Accordingly, on the next evening, instead of being on the look-out for Jössl to walk home with her, her one thought had been to find out the same place on the bank where they had sat – not with loving affection to recall the happy words she had heard there, but to listen for the sound of the Bergmännl’s axe, and perhaps follow it out; and then – and then – who could tell what might befall? Perhaps she might be able to obtain some chips of those vast wealth-stores unperceived; perhaps the Bergmännl’s heart might be opened to her – who could say but, in some mode or other, it might be the way to fortune?
She was not long in tracing out the spot, for she had marked the angle which the well-known outline of the mighty Sonnengebirg bore to the jagged “comb49” of the Kitzbichler-Horn, and for a nearer token, there lay, just before her, the crushed wild-flower which her Jössl had twisted and torn in his nervousness as he had brought himself to speak to her for the first time of their future. But she thought not of all that at that time; she was only concerned to find the spot, and to listen for the stroke of the Nickel’s pickaxe. “Hush!” that was it again, sure enough! She lingers not on that happy bank; she stops not to pick up one of those wild-flower tokens: ‘click, clack,’ goes the axe, and that is the sound to guide her steps. The village bells sound the Ave-Maria, but the sacred notes arrest her not – the evening prayer is forgotten in the thirst for gold.
But Jössl heard the holy sound as he was retracing his steps mournfully from his fruitless search after her, having missed her by but a minute’s interval. He heard it as he was passing a little old, old wayside chapel, which you may yet see, with a lordly pine-tree overshadowing it, and which records the melancholy fate of some Knappen who perished in the underground workings. Jössl, who has no fear on the steep mountain-side, and loves to hang dangerously between earth and sky when he is out after the chamois, shudders when he thinks of those long, dark, mysterious passages where the miners worked underground, and, as he kneels on the stone step of that wayside memorial, obedient to the village-bell, involuntarily applies his prayer to all those who have to penetrate those strange recesses: “Be with them; help them now and in the hour of death. Amen.” If you had told him his Aennerl was included in that prayer he would not have believed you then.
Meantime Aennerl had found her way to the opening of the old mine. It has a lateral shaft through which you may walk some distance – a very long way it seemed to Aennerl, now breathless and trembling, but the nearing sounds of the Bergmännl’s tool kept up her courage, and determined her not to give in till she had attained the goal.
On she went, groping her way with fear and trembling, and expecting every moment to come upon some terrible sight. But, far from this, in proportion as she got deeper into the intricate passages of the Röhrerbüchel, the way, instead of getting darker, grew lighter and lighter. A pale, clear, rosy light played on the sides of the working, which, now that she looked at them close, she found to her astonishment were not made of rough, yellow clay, as she had thought hitherto, but of pure, sparkling gold, and encrusted with gems!
It was no longer fear that palsied her, it was a fascination of delight at finding herself in the midst of those riches she coveted, but the near approach of which brought back misgivings of the danger of their possession of which she had so often heard, though without ever previously feeling an application to herself in the warning.
Her curiosity far too strongly stimulated to yield to the counsel of her conscience to turn and flee the temptation, she walked stealthily on and on, till the faint, rosy light grew into a red, radiant glow, which, as she reached its focus, quite dazzled her senses.
She now found herself in
Every body wears feathers according to their fancy in their “Alpine hats” here, but in Tirol every such adornment is a distinction won by merit, whether in target-shooting, wrestling, or any other manly sport; and, like the medals of the soldier, can only be worn by those who have made good their claim.
To Spaniards the outline of a mountain-ridge suggests the edge of a saw —
