The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 11

For a moment they were all silent; for anger flashed from the dikegrave's haggard face and they had superstitious fear of him. From one of the teams a bull-necked fellow stepped up to him. "I did not do it, dikegrave," he said and biting a little end off a roll of chewing tobacco he calmly stuffed that into his mouth before he went on; "but whoever did it did right; if your dike is to hold, something living must go into it!"

"Something living? In what catechism did you learn that?"

"In none, sir," replied the fellow and an insolent laugh came from his throat; "even our grandfathers knew that, who could certainly have measured themselves with you in Christianity! A child is still better; if that can't be had, a dog probably does instead!"

"Be silent with your heathenish doctrines!" Hauke shouted at him; "it would fill it up better if you were thrown in!"

"Oh ho!" The shout rang out from a dozen throats and the dikegrave found himself surrounded by wrathful faces and clenched fists; he saw that these were indeed no friends; the thought of his dike came over him with a shock; what should he do if they should all throw down their shovels now? And as he looked down he saw again old Jewe Manners' friend going about among the workmen, speaking to this one and that, laughing to one, tapping another on the shoulder with a friendly smile, and one after the other took hold of his spade again; a few moments more and the work was once more in full swing. What more did he want? The water-course would have to be closed and he hid the dog securely enough in the folds of his cloak. With sudden decision he turned his white horse towards the nearest wagon: "Straw to the edge!" he shouted commandingly and mechanically the teamster obeyed; soon it rustled down into the depths and on all sides the work stirred anew and all hands took hold busily.

The work had gone on thus for another hour; it was after six o'clock and already deep dusk was descending; the rain had ceased. Hauke called the superintendents to him as he sat on his horse: "Tomorrow morning at four o'clock," he said, "every man must be at his place; the moon will still be up; with God's help we shall be able to finish then! And one more thing," he called as they were about to go. "Do you know this dog?" and he took the trembling animal out of his cloak.

They replied in the negative; only one of them said: "He's been running about begging in the village for days; he doesn't belong to anyone!"

"Then he is mine," said the dikegrave. "Don't forget – tomorrow morning at four o'clock!" and rode away.

When he got home Ann Grete was just coming out of the door; she was cleanly and neatly dressed and it passed through his mind that she was just on her way to the tailor in the conventicle: "Lift up your apron!" he called to her and as she involuntarily obeyed he threw the little dog, covered with clay as he was, into it. "Take him to little Wienke; he shall be her little playfellow! But wash and warm him first, thus you will be doing a deed that is pleasing to God, for the creature is almost benumbed."

And Ann Grete could not refuse to obey her master, and so on that evening she did not get to the conventicle.

And on the following day the last touch of a spade was put to the new dike; the wind had gone down; now and again the gulls and avocets hovered above the land and water in graceful flight; from Jevershallig resounded the thousand-voiced honking of the barnacle geese that even at that time of year were enjoying themselves on the coast of the North Sea, and out of the morning mist, which hid the broad expanse of marsh, a golden autumn day gradually rose and illumined the new work of men's hands.

A few weeks later the chief dikegrave came with the government commissioners to inspect it. A great banquet, the first since the funeral repast at the time of old Tede Volkerts' death, was given in the dikegrave's house. All the dike commissioners and the men having the largest holdings of land in the new koog were invited. After dinner the dikegrave's carriage and all those of the guests were got ready. The chief dikegrave put Elke into the gig, before which the brown gelding stood stamping; then he jumped in himself and took the reins; he wanted to drive his dikegrave's clever wife himself. So they drove off merrily from the mound and out into the road, up the way to the new dike and along the top of that round, recently reclaimed koog. In the meantime a light northwest wind had sprung up and the tide was driven up on the north and west sides of the new dike; but it could not fail to be noticed that the gentle slope broke the force of the waves. The government commissioners were loud in their praise of the dikegrave, soon drowning the doubts that the local commissioners now and then hesitatingly uttered.

This occasion too passed by; but there was still another satisfaction in store for the dikegrave one day when he was riding along the new dike sunk in quiet self-congratulatory thought. The question might well occur to him why the koog, which never would have been there but for him and in which the sweat of his brow and his sleepless nights were buried, had now been named "the new Caroline Koog," after one of the princesses of the ruling house; but it certainly was so: in all the documents pertaining to it that was the name used, in some of them it was even written in red Gothic letters. At that point he looked up and saw two laborers with their farm implements coming towards him, one some twenty paces behind the other: "Wait for me, then," he heard the one that was following call; but the other, who was just standing at the path that led down into the koog, called back: "Some other time, Jens! It's late; I've got to dig clay here!"

"Where?"

"Why here, in the Hauke-Haien-Koog!"

He called it aloud as he ran down the path as if he wanted the whole marsh that lay below to hear. But to Hauke it was as if he heard his fame proclaimed; he rose in his saddle, put spurs to his horse and looked with steady eyes across the broad scene that lay at his left. "Hauke-Haien-Koog!" he repeated softly; that sounded as if it could never be called anything else. Let them be as obstinate as they would, his name could not be downed; the princess' name – would it not soon exist only in mouldy old documents? The white horse galloped on proudly and in Hauke's ears the words continued to ring: "Hauke-Haien-Koog! Hauke-Haien-Koog!" In his thoughts the new dike almost grew to be an eighth wonder of the world; in all Friesland there was none to equal it! And he let the white horse dance; he felt as if he stood in the midst of all Friesians; he towered above them by a head and his keen glance swept over them with pity.

Gradually three years had passed since the building of the new dike; the latter had proved successful and the expense of repairs had been but slight. In the koog white clover was now blooming nearly everywhere and when you walked across the protected pastures the summer breeze wafted a whole cloud of sweet scent towards you. It had been necessary to replace the nominal shares with real ones and to assign permanent holdings to each of the men interested. Hauke had not been slow in acquiring a few new ones himself, before that; Ole Peters had held back stubbornly; no part of the new koog belonged to him. Even so it had not been possible to make the division without vexation and dispute; but it had been done nevertheless, and this day too lay behind the dikegrave.

From then on he lived a lonely life, devoting himself to his duties as a farmer and a dikegrave, and to his immediate family; his old friends were no longer alive and he was not fitted to make new ones. But under his roof was peace which even his quiet child did not disturb; it spoke little; the continual questioning that is peculiar to brighter children seldom came from its lips and when it did it was usually in such a way that it was difficult to answer; but the dear, simple little face almost always wore an expression of content. The little girl had two playfellows and that was all she wanted: when she wandered about the mound the little yellow dog that Hauke had saved always accompanied her, jumping and springing, and whenever the dog appeared little Wienke was not far away either. The dog was called "Perle" and her second comrade, a peewit-gull, was "Klaus."

It was a hoary old woman who had installed Klaus at the farm; the eighty-year-old Trien' Jans had no longer been able to make a living in her cottage on the outside dike, and Elke had thought that the worn-out servant of her grandfather might still find with them a few peaceful hours at the end of her life and a comfortable place to die. So half by force she and Hauke had fetched the old body to the farm and settled her in the little northwest room of the new barn, which the dikegrave had been obliged to build when he enlarged his place a few years before. A few of the maids had been given their rooms next to hers so that they could look after her at night. All round the walls she had her old household goods; a strong box made of red cedar, above which hung two colored pictures of the prodigal son, a spinning wheel which had long since been laid aside and a very clean four-post bed in front of which stood a clumsy footstool covered with the white skin of the deceased Angora cat. But she also still had something living, and had brought it with her: this was the gull Klaus that had stuck to her for years and been fed by her; when winter came, to be sure, it flew south with the other gulls and did not come again till the wormwood exhaled its sweet odor along the shore.

The barn lay somewhat farther down the mound; from her window the old woman could not see out over the dike to the sea. "You've got me here like a prisoner," she murmured one day when Hauke came in, and pointed with her gnarled finger to the fens which lay spread out below. "Where is Jeverssand? Out there above the red or above the black ox?"

"What do you want with Jeverssand?" asked Hauke.

"Oh, never mind Jeverssand," grumbled the old woman. "But I want to see where, long ago, my lad went to God!"

"If you want to see that," replied Hauke, "you must go and sit up under the ash-tree; from there you can look well out over the sea."

"Yes," said the old woman; "yes, if I had your young legs, dikegrave!"

For a long time such were the thanks for the aid that the dikegrave and his wife had given her; then all at once there was a change. One morning Wienke's little head peeped in at her through the half-open door. "Well!" called the old woman, who was sitting on her wooden chair with her hands clasped, "what message have you got to tell me?"

But the child came silently nearer and looked at her unceasingly with indifferent eyes.

"Are you the dikegrave's child?" asked Trien' Jans, and, as the child lowered her head as if nodding, she continued: "Sit down here on my footstool then! It was an Angora tom-cat – as big as that! But your father killed him. If he were still alive you could ride on him."

Wienke looked at the white skin dumbly; then she knelt down and began to stroke it with her little hands as children do a living cat or dog. "Poor Tomcat!" she said, and continued her caresses.

"There," exclaimed the old woman after a while, "now it's enough; and you can still sit on him today; perhaps your father only killed him for that!" Then she lifted the child up by both arms and set her down roughly on the stool. But as Wienke sat there silent and immovable, only looking at her all the time, she began to shake her head: "Thou art punishing him, Lord God! Yes, yes, Thou art punishing him!" she murmured; but pity for the child seemed to come over her after all: she put out her bony hand and stroked the little girl's sparse hair and an expression came into the child's eyes as if she liked the touch.

From now on Wienke came to see the old woman in her room daily. Soon she sat down of her own accord on the Angora footstool and Trien' Jans gave her little pieces of meat or bread of which she always kept some on hand, and let her throw them on the floor; then the gull shot out of some corner, screeching, with outstretched wings, and fell upon them. At first the child used to be frightened and screamed at the big flapping bird; but soon it was like a game they had learnt, and as soon as she stuck even her head through the crack of the door the bird shot out towards her and lighted on her head or shoulder till the old woman came to her aid and the feeding could begin. Trien' Jans, who in general could not bear even to have anyone stretch out his hand towards her Klaus, now looked on patiently while the child gradually won the bird entirely away from her. It let Wienke catch it willingly; she carried it about and wrapped it in her apron, and, when, on the mound, the little yellow dog sometimes sprang about her and jumped jealously at the bird, she would cry out: "Not you, not you, Perle!" and would lift the gull so high in her little arms that it would free itself and fly away shrieking across the mound, and the dog would try to secure its place in her arms by jumping and rubbing against his little mistress.

When Hauke's or Elke's eyes chanced to fall on this odd group, like four leaves all held fast on one stem by only a common lack, a tender glance would indeed fly towards their child; when they turned away there remained in their faces only pain which each bore for himself, for they had never yet unburdened their hearts to each other about the child. One summer morning as Wienke was sitting with the old woman and the two animals on the big stone in front of the barn door, her parents, the dikegrave with his white horse behind him, the reins over his arm, passed by; he was going out on the dike and had fetched his horse from the fens himself; on the mound his wife had slipped her arm through his. The sun shone down warmly; it was almost sultry, and now and then there came a puff of wind from the south-southeast. The child must have found it tiresome where she was: "Wienke wants to go," she called, shook the gull from her lap, and reached for her father's hand.

"Come along then," he said.

But Elke exclaimed: "In this wind? She'll be blown away!"

"I'll hold on to her; and the air is warm today and the water merry; she can see it dance."

So Elke ran into the house and fetched a little shawl and a cap for her child. "But there's going to be bad weather," she said; "see that you hurry and go and get back again soon."

Hauke laughed: "That won't catch us!" and lifted the child up to his saddle in front of him. Elke remained out on the mound for a while and, shading her eyes with her hand, watched the two trotting out on the road and over to the dike; Trien' Jans sat on the stone and mumbled something incomprehensible with her faded lips.

The child lay without moving in her father's arm; and it seemed as if, oppressed by the thundery air, she were breathing with difficulty. He bent his head to her: "Well, Wienke?" he asked.

The child looked at him for a while. "Father," she said, "you can surely do that! Can't you do everything?"

"What ought I to be able to do, Wienke?"

But she was silent; she seemed not to have understood her own question.

It was high tide; when they came up on the dike the reflection of the sun on the great expanse of water shone in her eyes, a whirlwind drove the waves up high in an eddy, and others followed and beat splashingly against the shore; she clasped her little hands so fearfully about her father's fist in which he held the reins that the white horse bounded to one side. Her pale blue eyes looked up in confused terror to Hauke: "The water, Father, the water!" she cried.

But he freed himself gently and said: "Be quiet, child, you are with your father; the water won't hurt you!"

She smoothed the pale blonde hair away from her forehead and ventured to look out at the sea again. "It won't hurt me," she said trembling; "no, tell it not to hurt us; you can do that and then it won't hurt us."

"I can't do that, child," replied Hauke seriously; "but the dike on which we're riding protects us and it was your father who thought that out and had it built."

Her eyes looked at him as if she did not quite understand that; then she hid her strikingly small head in her father's loose coat.

"Why do you hide yourself, Wienke?" he whispered to her; "are you still frightened?" And a trembling voice came from the folds of his coat: "Wienke doesn't want to see; but you can do everything, can't you, Father?"

A distant clap of thunder rolled up against the wind. "Oh ho!" exclaimed Hauke, "there it comes!" and turned his horse to go back. "Now we'll go home to Mother."

The child drew a deep breath, but not until they had reached the mound and the house did she raise her little head from her father's breast. Then in the room when Elke had taken off the little shawl and the cap she remained standing like a little dumb ninepin in front of her mother. "Well, Wienke," said the latter and shook the little girl gently, "do you like the great water?"

But the child opened her eyes wide: "It speaks," she said; "Wienke is frightened."

"It doesn't speak; it only roars and surges."

The child looked off into the distance. "Has it legs?" she asked again; "can it come over the dike?"

"No, Wienke, your father takes care of that, he is a dikegrave."

"Yes," said the child and clapped her hands with an idiotic smile; "Father can do everything – everything." Then suddenly, turning away from her mother, she cried: "Let Wienke go to Trien' Jans, she has red apples!"

And Elke opened the door and let the child out. After she had shut it again she looked up at her husband, and an expression of the deepest sorrow lay in the eyes which hitherto had always brought consolation and courage to his aid.

He held out his hand and pressed hers as if there were no need of any further word between them; but she said softly: "No, Hauke, let me speak: the child that I have borne to you after waiting for years will always remain a child. O, dear God! She is feeble-minded; I must say it before you once."

"I have known it a long time," said Hauke, and held tight the hand that his wife wanted to draw away from him.

"And so we are still alone after all," she said.

But Hauke shook his head: "I love her and she throws her little arms around me and presses herself close against my breast; I would not do without that for any treasure!"

The woman looked darkly ahead of her: "But why?" she said; "What have I, poor mother, done to deserve it?"

"Yes, Elke, I too have asked that, asked Him who alone can know; but, as we both know, the Almighty gives men no answer – perhaps because we should not understand it."

He had taken his wife's other hand and drew her gently to him: "Don't let yourself grow disturbed and be hindered in loving your child, as you do; you can be sure she understands that."

At that Elke threw herself on her husband's breast and wept her fill and was no longer alone with her sorrow. Then suddenly she smiled at him; after pressing his hand vehemently she ran out and fetched her child from old Trien' Jans' room, and took her on her lap and fondled and kissed her till the little girl said stammeringly: "Mother, my dear Mother!"

Thus the people on the dikegrave's farm lived quietly together; if the child had not been there much would have been lacking.

Gradually the summer went by; the birds of passage had passed through, the air was empty of the song of the larks; only in front of the barns where they picked up grains of corn, while the threshing was going on, occasionally one or two could be heard as they flew away screeching; everything was already hard frozen. In the kitchen of the main house old Trien' Jans sat one afternoon on the wooden step of a stairway that led up from beside the range to the attic. During the last few weeks it seemed as if she had returned to life; she came gladly into the kitchen sometimes, and saw Elke at work there; there could no longer be any question of her legs not being able to carry her there, since one day when little Wienke had pulled her up there by her apron. Now the child knelt at her side and looked with her quiet eyes into the flames that flickered up out of the stove-hole. One of her little hands clasped the sleeve of the old woman, the other lay in her own pale blonde hair. Trien' Jans was telling a story: "You know," she said, "I was in your great grandfather's service as a housemaid and then I had to feed the pigs; he was cleverer than them all – then, it is terribly long ago, but one evening, the moon was shining and they closed the outer sluice and she could not get back into the sea. Oh, how she screamed and tore her hard shaggy hair with her little fish-hands! Yes, child, I saw it and heard her screaming myself! The ditches between the fens were all full of water and the moon shining on them made them sparkle like silver and she swam from one ditch into the other and lifted her arms and struck what were her hands together so that you could hear it a long way off, as if she wanted to pray; but, child, those creatures cannot pray. I was sitting in front of the door on a few beams that had been brought up there to be used in building, and looking far out across the fens; and the water-woman still swam in the ditches, and when she raised her arms they too glittered like silver and diamonds. At last I did not see her any more and the wild geese and gulls that I had not heard the whole time began to fly through the air again, hissing and cackling."

The old woman ceased; the child had caught up one word. "Could not pray?" she asked. "What do you say? Who was it?"

"Child," said the old woman, "it was the water-woman; those are accursed creatures who can never be saved."

"Never be saved," repeated the child and her little breast heaved with a deep sigh as if she had understood that.

"Trien' Jans," came a deep voice from the kitchen door and she started slightly. It was the dikegrave Hauke Haien who was leaning there against the post. "What are you saying to the child? Haven't I told you to keep your legends to yourself or to tell them to the geese and hens?"

The old woman looked at him with an angry glance and pushed the little girl away from her: "Those are no legends," she murmured half to herself, "my great-uncle told me that."

"Your great-uncle, Trien'? Why just now you said you had experienced it yourself!"

"It's all the same," said the old woman; "but you don't believe, Hauke Haien; I suppose you want to make my great-uncle out a liar." Then she drew nearer to the range and stretched her hands out over the flames in the grate.

The dikegrave threw a glance towards the window; it was scarcely dusk as yet outside. "Come, Wienke," he said and drew his feeble-minded child to him; "come with me; I want to show you something from out on the dike! Only we shall have to walk; the white horse is at the blacksmith's." Then he went with her into the living-room and Elke tied thick woolen shawls about the little girl's throat and shoulders; soon after her father took her out on the old dike towards the northwest, past Jeverssand, to where the flats lay broad before them almost farther than the eye could reach.

Part of the time he carried her, part of the time he led her by the hand; the twilight deepened gradually; in the distance everything disappeared in mist and vapor. But there, where one could still see, the invisibly swelling currents of the shallows had broken the ice, and, as Hauke had once seen it in his youth, smoking fog now rose from the cracks along which the uncanny, impish figures were once more to be seen hopping towards one another and bowing and suddenly stretching out wide, in a terrible fashion.

The child clung to her father in fear and covered her little face with his hand: "The sea-devils!" she whispered tremblingly between his fingers; "the sea-devils!"

He shook his head: "No, Wienke, neither water-women nor sea-devils; there are no such things; who told you about them?"

She looked up at him dully but did not answer. He stroked her cheeks tenderly: "Just look again," he said; "those are only poor hungry birds. Just see how the big one spreads his wings now; they are catching the fish that come into the steaming cracks."

"Fish," repeated Wienke.

"Yes, child, all those creatures are alive like us, there is nothing else. But God is everywhere!"

Little Wienke had fixed her eyes on the ground and held her breath; she looked as if she were gazing into an abyss terrified. Perhaps it only seemed so; her father looked at her long; he bent down and looked into her little face, but no feeling of her imprisoned soul was visible in it. He lifted her in his arms and stuck her benumbed hands into one of his thick woolen gloves: "there, my little Wienke," and the child probably did not hear the tone of intense tenderness in his words – "there, warm yourself close to me! You are our child after all, our only one. You love us – " The man's voice broke, but the little girl pressed her head tenderly into his rough beard.