If you are standing at the harbour where all the steamers call, and look out towards the sea, you will see a mountain on your left, covered with green trees, and behind the trees a large house built in the shape of a spider. For in the centre there is a round building from which radiate eight wings, that look very much like the eight legs on the round body of a spider. The people who enter the house do not leave it again at will, and some of them stay there for the rest of their life, for the house is a prison.
In the days of King Oscar I, the mountain was not green. On the contrary, it was grey and cold, for neither moss nor heart’s-ease would grow there, although these plants generally thrive on the bare rock. There was nothing but grey stone and grey people, who looked as if they had been turned into stone, and who quarried stone, broke stone, and carried stone. And among these people there was one who looked stonier than all the others.
He was still a youth when, in the reign of King Oscar I., he was shut up in this prison because he had killed a man.
He was a prisoner for life, and sewn on his grey prison garb was a large black “L.”
He was always on the mountain, in winter days and summer time, breaking stones. In the winter he had only the empty and deserted harbour to look at; the semicircular bridge with its poles had the appearance of a yawning row of teeth, and he could see the wood-shed, the riding-school, and the two gigantic, denuded lime trees. Sometimes an ice-yacht would sail past the islet; sometimes a few boys would pass on skates; otherwise it was quiet and forsaken.
In the summer time it was much jollier. For then the harbour was full of smart boats, newly painted and decorated with flags. And the lime trees, in the shade of which he had sat when he was a child, waiting for his father, who was an engineer on one of the finest boats, were green.
It was many years now since he had heard the rustling of the breeze in the trees, for nothing grew on his cliff, and the only thing in the world he longed for was to hear once again the whispering of the wind in the branches of the lime trees at Knightsholm.
Sometimes, on a summer’s day, a steamer would pass the islet; then he heard the plashing of the waves, or, perhaps, snatches of music; and he saw bright faces which grew dark as soon as their eyes fell on the grey stone men on the mountain.
And then he cursed heaven and earth, his fate and the cruelty of men. He cursed, year in, year out. And he and his companions tormented and cursed each other day and night; for crime isolates, but misfortune draws men together.
In the beginning his fate was unnecessarily cruel, for the keepers ill-treated the prisoners, mercilessly and at their pleasure.
But one day there was a change; the food was better, the treatment was less harsh, and every prisoner was given a cell of his own to sleep in. The king himself had loosened the chains of the prisoners a little; but since hopelessness had petrified the hearts of these unfortunate men, they were unable to feel anything like gratitude, and so they continued to curse; and now they came to the conclusion that it was more pleasant to sleep together in one room, for then they could talk all night. And they continued to complain of the food, the clothes, and the treatment, just as before.
One fine day all the bells of the town were ringing, and those of Knightsholm rang louder than any of the others. King Oscar was dead, and the prisoners had a holiday. Since they could talk to one another now, they talked of murdering the guards and escaping from prison; and they also talked of the dead king, and they spoke evil of him.
“If he had been a just man, he would have set us free,” said one of the prisoners.
“Or else he would have imprisoned all the criminals who are at large.”
“Then he himself would have had to be Governor of the Prison, for the whole nation are criminals.”
It is the way of prisoners to regard all men as criminals, and to maintain that they themselves were only caught because they were unlucky.
But it was a hot summer’s day, and the stone man walked along the shore, listening to the tolling of the bells for Oscar the king. He raised the stones and looked for tadpoles and sticklebacks, but could find none; not a fish was visible in the water, and consequently there was not a sign of a sea-gull or a tern. Then he felt that a curse rested on the mountain, a curse so strong that it kept even the fishes and the birds away. He fell to considering the life he was leading. He had lost his name, both Christian and surname, and was no more now than No. 65, a name written in figures, instead of in letters. He was no longer obliged to pay taxes. He had forgotten his age. He had ceased to be a man, ceased to be a living being, but neither was he dead. He was nothing but something grey moving on the mountain and being terribly scorched by the sun. It burned on his prison garb and on his head with the close-cropped hair, which in days long passed had been curly, and was combed with a tooth-comb every Saturday by his mother’s gentle hand. He was not allowed to wear a cap to-day, because it would have facilitated an attempt at escape. And as the sun scorched his head, he remembered the story of the prophet Jonah, to whom the Lord gave a gourd so that he might sit in its shade.
“A nice gift, that!” he sneered, for he did not believe in anything good; in fact, he did not believe in anything at all.
All at once he saw a huge birch branch tossed about in the surf. It was quite green and fresh and had a white stem; possibly it had fallen off a pleasure-boat. He dragged it ashore, shook the water off and carried it to a gully where he put it up, wedged firmly between three stones. Then he sat down and listened to the wind rustling through its leaves, which smelt of the finest resin.
When he had sat for a little while in the shade of the birch he fell asleep.
And he dreamed a dream.
The whole mountain was a green wood with lovely trees and odorous flowers. Birds were singing, bees and humble-bees buzzing, and butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. But all by itself and a little aside stood a tree which he did not know; it was more beautiful than all the rest; it had several stems, like a shrub, and the branches looked like lacework. And on one of its branches, half hidden by its foliage, sat a little black-and-white bird which looked like a swallow, but wasn’t one.
In his dream he could interpret the language of the birds, and therefore he understood to some extent what the bird was singing. And it sang:
Mud, mud, mud, mud here! We’ll throw, throw, throw here! In mud, mud, mud you died, From mud, mud, mud you’ll rise.
It sang of mud, death, and resurrection; that much he could make out.
But that was not all. He was standing alone on the cliff in the scorching heat of the sun. All his fellows-in-misfortune had forsaken him and threatened his life, because he had refused to be a party to their setting the prison on fire. They followed him in a crowd, threw stones at him and chased him up the mountain as far as he could go.
And finally he was stopped by a stone wall.
There was no possibility of climbing over it, and in his despair he resolved to kill himself by dashing his head against the stones. He rushed down the mountain, and behold! a gate was opened at the same moment—a green garden gate... and... he woke up.
When he thought of his life and realised that the green wood was nothing but the branch of a birch tree, he grew very discontented in his heart.
“If at least it had been a lime tree,” he grumbled. And as he listened he found that it was the birch which had sung so loudly; it sounded as if some one were sifting sand or gravel, and again he thought of the lime trees, which make the soft velvety sounds that touch the heart.
On the following day his birch was faded and gave little shade.
On the day after that the foliage was as dry as paper and rattled like teeth. And finally there was nothing left but a huge birch rod, which reminded him of his childhood.
He remembered the gourd of the prophet Jonah, and he cursed when the sun scorched his head.
***
A new king had come to the throne, and he brought fresh life into the government of the country. The town was to have a new watercourse, and therefore all the prisoners were commanded to dredge.
It was for the first time after many years that he was allowed to leave his cliff. He was in the boat, swimming on the water, and saw much in his native town that was new to him; he saw the railway and the locomotive. And they began dredging just below the railway station.
And gradually they brought up all the corruption which lay buried at the bottom of the sea. Drowned cats, old shoes, decomposed fat from the candle factory, the refuse from the dye works called “The Blue Hand,” tanners’ bark from the tannery, and all the human misery which the laundresses had batted off the clothes for the last hundred years. And there was such a terrible smell of sulphur and ammonia that only a prisoner could be expected to bear it.
When the boat was full, the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer steered for their own cliff.
All the mud was unloaded there and thrown on the mountain, and soon the air was filled with the foulest of smells. They waded ankle-deep in filth, and their clothes, hands, and faces were covered with it.
“This is like the infernal regions!” said the prisoners.
They dredged and unloaded on the cliff for several years, and ultimately the cliff disappeared altogether.
And the white snow fell winter after winter on all the corruption and threw a pure white cover over it.
And when the spring came once again and all the snow had melted, the evil smell had disappeared, and the mud looked like mould. There was no more dredging after this spring, and our stone man was sent to work at the forge and never came near the cliff. Only once, in the autumn, he went there secretly, and then he saw something wonderful.
The ground was covered with green plants. Ugly sappy plants, it was true, mostly bur-marigolds, that look like a nettle with brown flowers, which is ugly because flowers should be white, yellow, blue or red. And there were true nettles with green blossoms, and burs, sorrel, thistles, and notch-weed; all the ugliest, burning, stinging, evil-smelling plants, which nobody likes, and which grow on dust-heaps, waste land, and mud.
“We cleaned the bottom of the sea, and now we have all the dirt here; this is all the thanks we get!” said the prisoner.
Then he was transferred to another cliff, where a fort was to be built, and again he worked in stone; stone, stone, stone!
Then he lost one of his eyes, and sometimes he was flogged. And he remained a very long time there, so long that the new king died and was followed by his successor. On coronation day one of the prisoners was to be released. And it was to be the one who had behaved best during all the time and had arrived at a clear understanding that he had sinned. And that was he! But the other prisoners considered that it would be a wrong towards them, for in their circles a man who repents is considered a fool, “because he has done what he couldn’t help doing.”
And so the years passed. Our stone man had grown very old, and because he was now unable to do hard work, he was sent back to his cliff and set to sew sacks.
One day the chaplain on his round paused before the stone man, who sat and sewed.
“Well,” said the clergyman, “and are you never to leave this cliff?”
“How would that be possible?” replied the stone man.
“You will go as soon as you come to see that you did wrong.”
“If ever I find a human being who does not only do right, but more than is right, I will believe that I did wrong! But I don’t believe that there is such a being.”
“To do more than that which is right is to have compassion. May it please God that you will soon come to know it!”
One day the stone man was sent to repair the road on the cliff, which he had not seen for, perhaps, twenty years.
It was again a warm summer’s day, and from the passing steamers, bright and beautiful as butterflies, came the sounds of music and gay laughter.
When he arrived at the headland he found that the cliff had disappeared under a lovely green wood, whose millions of leaves glittered and sparkled in the breeze like small waves. There were tall, white birch trees and trembling aspens, and ash trees grew on the shore.
Everything was just as it had been in his dream. At the foot of the trees tall grasses nodded, butterflies played in the sunshine, and humble-bees buzzed from flower to flower. The birds were singing, but he could not understand what they said, and therefore he knew that it was not a dream.
The cursed mountain had been transformed into a mountain of bliss, and he could not help thinking of the prophet and the gourd.
“This is mercy and compassion,” whispered a voice in his heart, or perhaps it was a warning.
And when a steamer passed, the faces of the passengers did not grow gloomy, but brightened at the sight of the beautiful scenery; he even fancied that he saw some one wave a handkerchief, as people on a steamer do when they pass a summer resort.
He walked along a path beneath waving trees. It is true, there was not one lime tree; but he did not dare to wish for one, for fear the birches might turn into rods. He had learnt that much.
As he walked through a leafy avenue, he saw in the distance a white wall with a green gate. And somebody was playing on an instrument which was not an organ, for the movement was much jollier and livelier. Above the wall the pretty roof of a villa was visible, and a yellow and blue flag fluttered in the wind.
And he saw a gaily coloured ball rise and fall on the other side of the wall; he heard the chattering of children’s voices, and the clinking of plates and glasses told him that a table was being laid.
He went and looked through the gate. The syringa was in full flower, and the table stood under the flowering shrubs; children were running about, the piano was being played and somebody sang a song.
“This is Paradise,” said the voice within him.
The old man stood a long time and watched, so long that in the end he broke down, overcome by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, and all the misery of life.
Then the gate was opened and a little girl in a white dress came out. She carried a silver tray in her hand, and on the tray stood a glass filled with wine, the reddest wine which the old man had ever seen. And the child went up to the old man and said:
“Come now, daddy, you must drink this!”
The old man took the glass and drank. It was the rich man’s wine, which had grown a long way off in the sunny South; and it tasted like the sweetness of a good life when it is at its very best.
“This is compassion,” said his own old broken voice. “But you, child, in your ignorance, you wouldn’t have brought me this wine if you had known who I am. Do you know what I am?”
“Yes, you are a prisoner, I know that,” replied the little girl.
When the old stone man went back, he was no longer a man of stone, for something in him had begun to quicken.
And as he passed a steep incline, he saw a tree with many trunks, which looked like a shrub. It was more beautiful than the others; it was a buckthorn tree, but the old man did not know it. A restless little bird, black and white like a swallow, fluttered from branch to branch. The peasants call it tree-swallow, but its name is something else. And it sat in the foliage and sang a sweet sad song:
In mud, in mud, in mud you died, From mud, from mud, from mud you rose.
It was exactly as it had been in his dream. And now the old man understood what the tree-swallow meant.
Listen to the story of a young opera-singer who was so beautiful that the people in the street turned round to stare at her when she passed. And she was not only very beautiful, but she had a better voice than most singers.
The conductor of the orchestra, who was also a composer, came and laid his heart and all his possessions at her feet. She took his possessions, but left his heart lying in the dust.
Now she was famous, more famous than any other singer; she drove through the streets in her elegant victoria, and nodded to her portrait, which greeted her from all the stationers’ and booksellers’ shop windows.
And as her fame grew, her picture appeared on post-cards, soap and cigar boxes. Finally her portrait was hung up in the foyer of the theatre, amongst all the dead immortals; and as a result her head began to swell.
One day she was standing on a pier, the sea was very rough and there was a strong current. The conductor, of course, stood by her side, and a great many young men were present, paying her court. The beauty was playing with a rose; all the cavaliers coveted the flower, but she said that it should become the property of him who knew how to earn it, and she flung it far out into the sea. The cavaliers looked at it with longing glances, but the conductor jumped off the pier without a moment’s hesitation, swam like a sea-gull on the crests of the waves and soon held the flower between his lips.
The cavaliers cheered, and the swimmer could read the promise of love in his lady’s eyes. But when he struck out for the shore, he found that he could not move from the spot. He had been caught in the current. The singer on the pier did not realise his danger, but merely thought he was fooling, and therefore she laughed. But the conductor, who saw death staring him in the face, misunderstood her laughter; a bitter pang shot through his heart, and then his love for her was dead.
However, he came ashore at last, with bleeding hands, for he had cut them at the pier in many places.
“I will marry you,” said the beauty.
“No, thank you,” replied the conductor; turned, and walked away.
This was an offence for which she swore that she would be revenged.
Only the people connected with the theatre, who understand these things, know how it happened that the conductor lost his post. He had been firmly established, and it took two years to get rid of him.
But he was got rid of; she watched the downfall of her benefactor and triumphed, and her head swelled still more, in fact it swelled so much that everybody noticed it. The public, who realised that the heart underneath the beautiful form was wicked, ceased to be touched by her singing, and no longer believed in her smiles and tears.
She soon became aware of it, and it embittered her. But she continued ruling at the theatre, suppressed all young talents, and used her influence with the press to ruin their careers.
She lost the love and respect of her audiences, but she did not mind that as long as she remained in power; and as she was wealthy, influential, and contented, she throve and prospered.
Now, when people are prosperous, they do not lose flesh; on the contrary, they are inclined to grow stout; and she really began to grow corpulent. It came so gradually that she had no idea of it until it was too late. Bang! The downhill journey is ever a fast journey, and in her case it was accomplished with startling rapidity. She tried every remedy—in vain! She kept the best table in the whole town, but she starved herself, and the more she starved, the stouter she grew.
One more year, and she was no longer a great star, and her pay was reduced. Two more years and she was half forgotten, and her place was filled by others. After the third year she was not re-engaged, and she went and rented an attic.
“She is suffering from an unnatural corpulency,” said the stage-manager to the prompter.
“It’s not corpulency at all,” replied the prompter, “she’s just puffed up with pride.”
***
Now she lived in the attic and looked out on a large plantation. In the middle of this plantation stood a tobacco shed, which pleased her, because it had no windows behind which curious people could sit and stare at her. Sparrows had built their nests under the eaves, but the shed was no longer used for drying or storing tobacco, which was not, now, grown on the plantation.
There she lived during the summer, looking at the shed and wondering what purpose it could possibly serve, for the doors were locked with large padlocks, padlocks, and nobody ever went in or out.
She knew that it contained secrets, and what these secrets were, she was to learn sooner than she expected.
A few little shreds of her great reputation, to which she clung desperately, and which helped her to bear her life, were still left: the memory of her best parts, Carmen and Aida, for which no successor had yet been found; the public still remembered her impersonation of these parts, which had been beyond praise.
Very well, August came; the street lamps were again lighted in the evenings, and the theatres were reopened.
The singer sat at her window and looked at the tobacco shed, which had been painted a bright red, and, moreover, had just received a new red-tiled roof.
A man walked across the potato field; he carried a large rusty key, with which he opened the shed and went in.
Then two other men arrived; two men whom she thought she had seen before; and they, too, disappeared in the shed.
It began to be interesting.
After a while the three men reappeared, carrying large, strange objects, which looked like the bottom of a bed or a big screen.
When they had passed the gate, they turned the screens round and leaned them against the wall; one of them represented a badly painted tiled stove, another the door of a country cottage, perhaps a forester’s cottage. Others a wood, a window, and a library.
She understood. It was the scenery of a play. And after a while she recognised the rose tree from Faust.
The shed was used by the theatre for storing scenes and stage properties; she herself had more than once stood by the side of the rose tree, singing “Gentle flowers in the dew.”
The thought that they were going to play Faust wrung her heart, but she had one little comfort: she had never sung the principal part in it, for the principal part is Margaret’s.
“I don’t mind Faust; but I shall die if they play Carmen or Aida.”
And she sat and watched the change in the repertoire. She knew a fortnight before the papers what was going to be played next. It was amusing in a way. She knew when the Freischütz was going to be played, for she saw the wolves’ den being brought out; she knew when they were going to put on the Flying Dutchman, for the ship and the sea came out of the shed; and Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, and many others.
But the inevitable day dawned—for the inevitable must happen. The men had again gone into the shed (she remembered that the name of one of them was Lindquist, and that it was his business to look after the pulleys), and presently reappeared with a Spanish market-place. The scene was not standing straight up, so that she could not see at once what it was, but one of the men turned it slowly over, and when he stood it up on its side she could see the back, which is always very ugly. And one after the other, slowly, as if they warded to prolong the torture, huge, black letters appeared: CARMEN. It was Carmen!
“I shall die,” said the singer.
But she did not die, not even when they played Aida. But her name was blotted out from the memory of the public, her picture disappeared from the stationers’ windows, and from the post-cards; finally her portrait was removed from the foyer of the theatre by an unknown hand.
She could not understand how men could forget so quickly. It was quite inexplicable! But she mourned for herself as if she were mourning a friend who had died; and wasn’t it true, that the singer, the famous singer, was dead?
One evening she was strolling through a deserted street. At one end of the street was a rubbish shoot. Without knowing why, she stood still, and then she had an object lesson on the futility of all earthly things. For on the rubbish heap lay a post-card, and on the post-card was her picture in the part of Carmen.
She walked away quickly, suppressing her tears. She came to a little side street, and stopped before a stationer’s shop. It had been her custom to look at the shop windows to see whether her portrait was exhibited. But it was not exhibited here; instead of that her eyes fell on a text and she read it, unconsciously:
“The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.”
Them that do evil! That was the reason why her memory was blotted out. That was the explanation of the forgetfulness of men.
“But is it not possible to undo the wrong I have done?” she moaned. “Have I not been sufficiently punished?”
And she wandered in the direction of the wood, where she was not likely to meet anybody. And as she was walking along, crushed, humiliated, her heart full of despair, she met another lonely being, who stopped her as she was going to pass him. His eyes begged permission to speak to her.
It was the conductor. But his eyes did not reproach her, nor did they pity her, they only expressed admiration, admiration and tenderness.
“How beautiful and slender you have grown, Hannah,” he said.
She looked at herself, and she could not help admitting that he was right. Grief had burnt all her superfluous fat and she was more beautiful than she had ever been.
“And you look as young as ever! Younger!”
It was the first kind word which she had heard for many a day; and since it had been spoken by him whom she had wronged, she realised what a splendid character he had, and said so.
“I hope you haven’t lost your voice?” asked the conductor, who could not bear flattery.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed.
“Come to me to-morrow... yes, come to the Opera-house, and then we shall see. I am conducting there....”
The singer went, not once or twice, but many times, and regained her former position.
The public had forgiven and forgotten all the evil she had done. And she became greater and more famous than she had been before.
Isn’t that an edifying story?
It was Saturday night in Göschenen, in the canton of Uri, that part of Switzerland which William Tell and Walter Fürst have made famous. The pretty green village on the northern side of the St. Gotthard is situated on a little stream which drives a mill-wheel and contains trout. Quiet, kindly people live there, who speak the German language and have home rule, and the “sacred wood” protects their homes from avalanche and landslip.
On the Saturday night I am speaking of, all the folks were gathering round the village pump, underneath the great walnut tree, at the hour when the church bells were ringing the Angelus. The postmaster, the magistrate, and the colonel were there, all in their shirt-sleeves and carrying scythes. They had been mowing all day long, and had come to the pump to wash their scythes, for in the little village work was sacred and every man was his own servant. Then the young men came trooping through the village street, carrying scythes too, and the maids with their milk-pails; finally the cows, a gigantic breed, every cow as big as a bull. The country is rich and fertile, but it bears neither wine nor olives, neither the mulberry tree nor the luxurious maize. Nothing but green grass and golden corn, the walnut tree and the luscious beet-root grow there.
At the foot of the steep wall of the St. Gotthard, close to the pump, stood the inn, “The Golden Horse.” All the tired men, regardless of rank or position, were sitting at a long table in the garden, not one of them was missing: the magistrate, the postmaster, the colonel and the farmers’ labourers; the straw-hat manufacturer and his workmen, the little village shoemaker, and the schoolmaster, they were all there.
They talked of cattle breeding and harvest time; they sang songs, reminiscent in their simplicity of cowbells and the shepherd’s flute. They sang of the spring and its pure joys, of its promise and its hope. And they drank the golden beer.
After a while the young men rose to play, to wrestle and to jump, for on the following day was the annual festival of the Rifle Club, and there would be trials of strength, and competitions; it was important therefore that their limbs should be supple.
And at an early hour that night the whole village was in bed, for no man must be late on the morning of the festival, and no one must be sleepy or dull. The honour of the village was involved.
***
It was Sunday morning; the sun was shining brightly and the church bells were ringing. Men and women from the neighbouring villages, in their best Sunday clothes, were gathering on the village green, and all of them looked happy and very wide awake. Nearly every man carried a gun instead of the scythe; and matrons and maids looked at the men with scrutinising and encouraging eyes, for it was for the defence of their country and their homes that they had learned to handle a gun; and to-night the best shot would have the honour of opening the dance with the prettiest girl of the village.
A large waggon, drawn by four horses, gaily decorated with flowers and ribbons, drew up; the whole waggon had been transformed into a summer arbour; one could not see the people inside, but one could hear their songs. They sang of Switzerland and the Swiss people, the most beautiful country and the bravest people in the world.
Behind the waggon walked the children’s procession. They went by twos, hand in hand, like good friends or little brides and bridegrooms.
And with the pealing of bells the procession slowly wound up the mountain to the church.
After divine service the festivities began, and very soon shots were fired on the rifle-range, which was built against the rocky wall of the St. Gotthard.
The postmaster’s son was the best shot in the village, and nobody doubted that he would win the prize. He hit the bull’s-eye four times out of six.
From the summit of the mountain came a hallooing and a crashing; stones and gravel rolled down the precipice, and the fir trees in the sacred wood rocked as if a gale were blowing. On the top of a cliff, his rifle slung across his shoulders, frantically waving his hat, appeared the wild chamois hunter Andrea of Airolo, an Italian village on the other side of the mountain.
“Don’t go into the wood!” screamed the riflemen.
Andrea did not understand.
“Don’t go into the sacred wood,” shouted the magistrate, “or the mountain will fall on us!”
“Let it fall, then,” shouted Andrea, running down the cliff with incredible rapidity.
“Here I am!”
“You’re too late!” exclaimed the magistrate.
“I have never been too late yet!” replied Andrea; went to the shooting-range, raised his rifle six times to his cheek, and each time hit the bull’s-eye.
Now, he really was the best shot, but the club had its regulations, and, moreover, the dark-skinned men from the other side of the mountain, where the wine grew and the silk was spun, were not very popular. An old feud raged between them and the men of Göschenen, and the newcomer was disqualified.
But Andrea approached the prettiest girl in the grounds, who happened to be the magistrate’s own daughter, and politely asked her to open the dance with him.
Pretty Gertrude blushed, for she was fond of Andrea, but she was obliged to refuse his request.
Andrea frowned, bowed and whispered words into her ear, which covered her face with crimson.
“You shall be my wife,” he said, “even if I have to wait ten years for you. I have walked eight hours across the mountain to meet you; that is why I am so late; next time I shall be in good time, even if I should have to walk right through the mountain itself.”
The festivities were over. All the riflemen were sitting in “The Golden Horse,” Andrea in the midst of them. Rudi, the son of the postmaster, sat at the head of the table, because he was the prize-winner according to the regulations, even if Andrea was the best shot in reality.
Rudi was in a teasing mood.
“Well, Andrea,” he said, “we all know you for a mighty hunter; but, you know, it’s easier to shoot a chamois than to carry it home.”
“If I shoot a chamois I carry it home,” replied Andrea.
“Maybe you do! But everybody here has had a shot at Barbarossa’s ring, although nobody has won it yet!” answered Rudi.
“What is that about Barbarossa’s ring?” asked a stranger who had never been in Göschenen.
“That’s Barbarossa’s ring, over there,” said Rudi.
He pointed to the side of the mountain, where a large copper ring hung on a hook, and went on:
“This is the road by which King Frederick Barbarossa used to travel to Italy; he travelled over it six times, and was crowned both in Milan and in Rome. And as this made him German-Roman emperor, he caused this ring to be hung up on the mountain, in remembrance of his having wedded Germany to Italy. And if this ring, so goes the saying, can be lifted off its hook, then the marriage, which was not a happy one, will be annulled.”
“Then I will annul it,” said Andrea. “I will break the bonds as my fathers broke the bonds which bound my poor country to the tyrants of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden.”
“Are you not a Swiss, yourself?” asked the magistrate severely.
“No, I am an Italian of the Swiss Confederation.”
He slipped an iron bullet into his gun, took aim and shot.
The ring was lifted from below and jerked off the hook. Barbarossa’s ring lay at their feet.
“Long live Italy!” shouted Andrea. throwing his hat into the air.
Nobody said a word.
Andrea picked up the ring, handed it to the magistrate and said:
“Keep this ring in memory of me and this day, on which you did me a wrong.”
He seized Gertrude’s hand and kissed it; climbed up the mountain and disappeared; was seen again and vanished in a cloud. After a while he reappeared, high above them; but this time it was merely his gigantic shadow thrown on a cloud. And there he stood, shaking a threatening fist at the village.
“That was Satan himself,” said the colonel.
“No, it was an Italian,” said the postmaster.
“Since it is late in the evening,” said the magistrate, “I’ll tell you an official secret, which will be read in all the papers to-morrow.”
“Hear! hear!”
“We have received information that when it became known that the Emperor of France was made a prisoner at Sedan, the Italians drove the French troops out of Rome, and that Victor Emanuel is at this moment on his way to the capital.”
“This is great news. It puts an end to Germany’s dreams of promenades to Rome. Andrea must have known about it when he boasted so much.”
“He must have known more,” said the magistrate.
“What? What?”
“Wait, and you’ll see.”
And they saw.
***
One day strangers came and carefully examined the mountain through their field-glasses. It looked as if they were gazing at the place where Barbarossa’s ring had hung, for that was the spot at which they directed their glasses. And then they consulted the compass, as if they did not know which was the North and which was the South.
There was a big dinner at “The Golden Horse,” at which the magistrate was present. At dessert they talked of millions and millions of money.
A short time after “The Golden Horse” was pulled down; next came the church, which was taken down piece by piece and built up again on another spot; half the village was razed to the ground; barracks were built, the course of the stream deflected, the mill-wheel taken away, the factory closed, the cattle sold.
And then three thousand Italian-speaking labourers with dark hair and olive skins arrived on the scene.
The beautiful old songs of Switzerland and the pure joys of spring were heard no more.
Instead of that, the sound of hammering could be heard day and night. A jumper was driven into the mountain at the exact spot where Barbarossa’s ring had hung; and then the blasting began.
It would not have been so very difficult (as everybody knew) to make a hole through the mountain, but it was intended to make two holes, one on each side, and the two holes were to meet in the middle; nobody believed that this was possible, for the tunnel was to be nearly nine miles long. Nearly nine miles!
And what would happen if they did not meet? Well, they would have to begin again at the beginning.
But the engineer-in-chief had assured them that they would meet.
Andrea, on the Italian side, had faith in the engineer-in-chief, and since he was himself a very capable fellow, as we know, he applied for work under him and soon was made a foreman.
Andrea liked his work. He no longer saw daylight, the green fields and snow-clad Alps. But he fancied that he was cutting a way for himself through the mountain to Gertrude, the way which he had boasted he would come.
For eight years he stood in darkness, living the life of a dog, stripped to the waist, for he was working in a temperature of a hundred degrees. Now the way was blocked by a spring, and he had to work standing in the water; now by a deposit of loam, and he stood almost knee-deep in the mire; the atmosphere was nearly always foul, and many of his fellow-labourers succumbed to it; but new ones were ever ready to take their place. Finally Andrea, too, succumbed, and was taken into the hospital. He was tortured by the idea that the two tunnels would never meet. Supposing they never met!
There were also men from the other side in the hospital; and at times, when they were not delirious, they would ask one another the all-absorbing question: “Would they meet?”
The people from the South had never before been so anxious to meet the people from the North as they were now, deep down in the heart of the mountain. They knew that if they met, their feud of over a thousand years’ standing would be over, and they would fall into each other’s arms, reconciled.
Andrea recovered and returned to work; he was in the strike of 1875, threw a stone, and underwent a term of imprisonment.
In the year 1877 his native village, Airolo, was destroyed by fire.
“Now I have burnt my boats behind me,” he said, “there is no going back—I must go on.”
The 19th of July 1879 was a day of mourning. The engineer-in-chief had gone into the mountain to measure and to calculate; and, all absorbed in his work, he had had a stroke and died. Died with his race only half run! He ought to have been buried where he fell, in a more gigantic stone pyramid than any of the Egyptian Pharaohs had built for tees, and his name, Favre, should have been carved into the stone.
However, time passed, Andrea gained money, experience, and strength. He never went to Göschenen, but once a year he went to the “sacred wood” to contemplate the devastation, as he said.
He never saw Gertrude, never sent her a letter; there was no need for it, he was always with her is his thoughts, and he felt that her will was his.
In the seventh year the magistrate died, in poverty.
“What a lucky thing that he died a poor man,” thought Andrea; and there are not many sons-in-law who would think like that.
In the eighth year something extraordinary happened; Andrea, foremost man on the Italian side of the tunnel, was hard at work, beating on his jumper. There was scarcely any air; he felt suffocated, and suffered from a disagreeable buzzing in his ears. Suddenly he heard a ticking, which sounded like the ticking of a wood-worm, whom people call “the death-watch.”
“Has my last hour come?” he said, thinking aloud.
“Your last hour!” replied a voice; he did not know whether it was within or without him, but he felt afraid.
On the next day he again heard the ticking, but more distinctly, so that he came to the conclusion that it must be his watch.
But on the third day, which was a holiday, he heard nothing; and now he believed that it must have been something supernatural; he was afraid and went to mass, and in his heart he deplored the futility of life. He would never see the great day, never win the prize offered to the man who would first walk through the dividing wall, never win Gertrude.
On the Monday, however, he was again the foremost of the men in the tunnel, but he felt despondent, for he no longer believed that they would meet the Germans in the mountain.
He beat and hammered, but without enthusiasm, slowly, as his weakened heart was beating after the tunnel-sickness. All of a sudden he heard something like a shot and a tremendous crashing noise inside the mountain on the other side.
And now a light burst on him; they had met.
He fell on his knees and thanked God. And then he arose and began to work. He worked during breakfast, during dinner, during recreation time, and during supper. When his right arm was lame with exertion, he worked with the left one. He thought of the engineer-in-chief, who had been struck down before the wall of rock; he sang the song of the three men in the fiery furnace, for it seemed to him that the air around him was red-hot, while the perspiration dropped from his forehead, and his feet stood in the mire.
On the stroke of seven, on the 28th of January, he fell forward on his jumper, which pierced the wall right through. Loud cheering from the other side roused him, and he understood; he realised that they had met, that his troubles were over, and that he was the winner of ten thousand lire.
After a sigh of thanksgiving to the All-Merciful God, he pressed his lips to the bore-hole and whispered the name, of Gertrude; and then he called for three times three cheers for the Germans.
At eleven o’clock at night, there were shouts of “attention!” on the Italian side, and with a thunderous crash, a noise like the booming of cannon at a siege, the wall fell down. Germans and Italians embraced one another and wept, and all fell on their knees and sang the “Te Deum laudamus.”
It was a great moment; it was in 1880, the year in which Stanley’s work in Africa was done, and Nordensköld had accomplished his task.
When they had sung the “Te Deum” a German workman stepped forward and handed to the Italians a beautifully got-up parchment. It was a record and an appreciation of the services of the engineer-in-chief, Louis Favre.
He was to be the first man to pass through the tunnel, and Andrea was appointed to carry the memorial and his name by the little workmen’s train to Airolo.
And Andrea accomplished his mission faithfully, sitting before the locomotive on a barrow.
Yes, it was a great day, and the night was no less great.
They drank wine in Airolo, Italian wine, and let off fireworks. They made speeches on Louis Favre, Stanley, and Nordensköld; they made a speech on the St. Gotthard, which, for thousands of years had been a barrier between Germany and Italy, between the North and the South. A barrier it had been, and at the same time a uniter, honestly dividing its waters between the German Rhine, the French Rhone, the North Sea and the Mediterranean....
“And the Adriatic,” interrupted a man from Tessin. “Don’t forget the Ticino, which is a tributary to the largest river of Italy, the mighty Po....”
“Bravo! That’s better still! Three cheers for the St. Gotthard, the great Germany, the free Italy, and the new France!”
It was a great night, following a great day.
***
On the following morning Andrea called at the Engineering Offices. He wore his Italian shooting-dress; an eagle’s feather ornamented his hat, and a gun and a knapsack were slung across his shoulder. His face and his hands were white.
“So you have done with the tunnel,” said the cashier, or the “moneyman,” as they called him. “Well, nobody can blame you for it, for what remains to be done is mason’s work. To your account, then!”
The moneyman opened a book, wrote something on a piece of paper, and handed Andrea ten thousand lire in gold.
Andrea signed his name, put the gold into his knapsack and went.
He jumped into a workman’s train, and in ten minutes he had arrived at the fallen barrier. There were fires burning in the mountain, the workmen cheered when they saw him and waved their caps. It was splendid!
Ten more minutes and he was at the Swiss side. When he saw the daylight shining through the entrance to the tunnel, the train stopped and he got out.
He walked towards the green light, and came to the village and the green world, bathed in sunlight; the village had been rebuilt and looked prettier than before. And when the workmen saw him they saluted their first man.
He went straight up to a little house, and there, under a walnut tree, by the side of the bee-hives, stood Gertrude, calm, and a hundred times more beautiful and gentle. It looked as if she had stood there for eight years, waiting for him.
“Now I have come,” he said, “as I intended to come! Will you follow me to my country?”
“I will follow you wherever you go!”
“I gave you a ring long ago; have you still got it?”
“I have it still!”
“Then let us go at once! No, don’t turn back! Don’t take anything with you!”
And they went away, hand in hand, but not through the tunnel.
“On to the mountain!” said Andrea, turning in the direction of the old pass; “through darkness I came to you, but in light I will live with you and for you!”