She then led them through wash-house and press into the living-room, made them sit down, and would not let them open their neckerchiefs or spencers lest they catch cold. After the midday meal they were allowed to go out and play, run about the house, or do anything they liked, provided it was not indecorous or forbidden. The dyer, always at table with them, asked them about their school work, dwelling particularly on the subjects they should study. In the afternoon, even before it was time, their grandmother would begin urging them to start back, so that they would not be late reaching home. Although the dyer had given his daughter no dowry and vowed that until his death none of his fortune should be given away, his wife had no such scruples, and not only gave the children all kinds of things when they visited her, frequently even pieces of money of considerable value, but also and invariably made up two little bundles in which she put such things as she thought they might need or that would give them pleasure. And even if they had the same things in the shoemaker’s house in Gschaid—as good as one could desire—their grandmother would give for the sheer pleasure of giving, and they would carry her gifts home with them as something very precious. So it always happened that the day before Christmas they would take home carefully wrapped well-sealed packages, quite unaware that they were presents they would receive that same evening.
Their grandmother’s bundling them off always long before it was time merely resulted in the children’s loitering at this spot or that along the way. They liked to sit by the hazel-trees on the col and crack nuts with stones; or if there were no nuts, play with leaves or little sticks or with the pine-cones that drop from the pine and fir branches in early spring. Sometimes Conrad would tell little stories to his sister, or coming to the wayside shrine, would take her a little way up the side-road at the left toward the heights, saying that that was the way to Snow-mountain, that there were crags and huge boulders up there, chamois scampering, and great birds flying about. He often took her even high up above the tree-line, and they would gaze at the dry grass and stunted heather; but he led her back again in time and they would have returned before the gloaming.
One winter, the day before Christmas, when in the valley of Gschaid early dawn had broadened into day, a faint clear-weather haze overspread the sky, so that the sun creeping up in the south-east could be seen only as an indistinct reddish ball; furthermore, the air was mild, almost warm in the valley and even in the upper reaches of the sky as indicated by the unchanging forms of the motionless clouds. So the shoemaker’s wife said to the children: “Since it is such a fine day and since it has not rained for a long time and the roads are hard, and since yesterday your father gave you permission, provided it was the right kind of day, you may go over to Millsdorf to see your grandmother; but first you must ask your father again.”
The children, still in their night-clothes, ran into the adjoining room where their father was talking with a customer, and begged him—since it was such a beautiful day—to give them his permission again. And as soon as they had his consent, they ran back to their mother who then dressed them both with great care, or rather, dressed the little girl, for the lad was able to dress by himself and was ready long before his mother had finished bundling up the little one in warm clothes. Then, when everything was right, she said: “Now Conrad, listen carefully. Since I am letting your sister go with you, you must start for home in plenty of time and you must not loiter on the way. As soon as dinner at your grandmother’s is over, you must leave at once and come straight home. The days are short now, and the sun sets early.”
“Yes, Mother, I know,” said Conrad.
“And watch out for Sanna, so she doesn’t fall or get herself overheated.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Well, God protect you. Now go tell your father you are leaving.”
The lad slung a calfskin pouch over his shoulder by a strap—a perquisite deftly sewn by his father—and the children went into the next room to bid him farewell. They were soon back, and after their mother had made the sign of the cross over them in blessing, they skipped merrily off down the street.
They walked quickly along the square and the row of houses, past the picket fences of the orchards, and finally came into the open. The sun had already risen over the woodlands on the eastern heights that were still shot with wefts of pale mist,—the dull reddish ball keeping pace with them through the leafless branches of the crab-apple trees.
There was no snow anywhere in the valley; the higher mountains which had been glistening for weeks, were covered with it; the lower ones stood snowless and silent in their pine-mantle of green and fallow brown of bare branches. The ground was not yet frozen and would have been quite dry because of the long stretch without rain, if the cold had not overlaid it with a faint moisture, which instead of making it slippery, had made it all the safer and so resilient that walking was easy. The sparse grass still on the meadows and particularly along the ditches, had an autumn look. There was no frost on the grass and examined closely, not even any dew, all of which interpreted locally was a sign that rain was imminent.
Down toward the far edge of the meadow was a mountain brook crossed by a high plank. The children walked along the plank and looked down. There was scarcely any water in the brook, a mere thread of intense blue on the stony bed, the dry pebbles having become perfectly white in the long weeks without rain, and the scantness as well as the color of the water meant bitter cold at the higher altitudes—cold that held the ground in a vise so it could not make the brook turbid with sediment, and hardening the ice so the core gave off only a few clear drops.
From the foot-bridge the children raced over the meadows, closer and closer to the woodland.
They came at last to the outskirts of the forest and went on into it.
When they had climbed into the higher woods of the neck, the long ruts in the cart-road were not soft as they had been in the valley, but firm, because they were frozen; in some places hard enough to bear the children’s weight. Child-like, they no longer kept to the smooth path by the road but walked in the ruts, seeing which ridges would bear their weight. When in an hour they had reached the crest of the col, the ground was by that time so hard their steps rang and the clods were like iron.
Sanna was the first to notice at the shrine erected in memory of the baker, that the red post supporting the tablet was no longer there. They went closer and saw that it lay in the dry grass that stood up like pale straw, partly concealing it. They did not see why the post should be lying there—whether it had been thrown down or had fallen of itself—but they did see the wood rotted where it came out of the ground, and that it might have toppled over of itself; but as it lay there, they were glad to be able to have a closer look at the picture and the inscription. When they had studied it all,—the basket with the rolls, the whitish hands of the baker, his closed eyes, his gray coat, and the pines about him—had spelled out the legend and then said it out loud—they proceeded on their way.
Another hour and the dark woods on both sides were dim behind them; thin-set trees, part single oaks, part birch and clusters of scrub, met the eye, continuing with them a distance and shortly after, the children were running down through the meadows into the valley of Millsdorf.
Although this valley is considerably lower than that of Gschaid and is therefore so much warmer that harvest begins two weeks earlier than in Gschaid, the ground here was frozen too; and when the children came to their grandfather’s tannery and fulling-mill, they found in the road where the wheels scatter drops of water, thin sheets of cat’s-ice, ever a delight to children.
Their grandmother had seen them and coming out to meet them, took Sanna’s little cold hands in hers and led the children inside.
She undid their wraps, had fresh wood put in the stove, and asked what had happened on the way over.
When they had answered, she said: “That’s good, that’s all right, I am glad you came, but this time you must be off very soon, the days are short and it is getting co
lder; nothing was frozen in Millsdorf this morning.”
“Nor in Gschaid,” said the lad.
“See? You must hurry then so you won’t be too cold by evening,” answered their grandmother.
Then she asked how their mother was, how was their father, and had anything happened in Gschaid.
After these inquiries she busied herself with the meal, made sure it would be on the table earlier than usual, and herself prepared little appetizing things for the children that she knew they liked. Then the dyer was called in, the children sat down at the table laid for them as for grownups, ate with their grandfather and grandmother, the latter piling good things on their plates. After dinner, she patted Sanna’s cheek, quite rosy by this time. Then she bustled about here and there, packing to overflowing the lad’s calfskin pouch, besides stuffing things into his pockets. She also put divers things into Sanna’s little pockets, gave them each a piece of bread to eat on the way, and in the bag, she told them, were two rolls in case they became very hungry.
“For your mother,” she said, “I am giving you some well-roasted coffee-beans, and in the very tightly wrapped bottle with the stopper is some black coffee extract better than your mother herself usually makes; she can taste some just as it is; it is a veritable tonic, so strong the merest sip warms the stomach so that you cannot feel chilled even on the coldest of winter days. The other things in the bag, in the cardboard box wrapped with paper, you are to take home without opening.”
After a word or two more with the children, she said they must go.
“Take good care, Sanna,” she said, “not to get chilled; don’t get overheated; and don’t you run up over the meadows and under the trees. The wind may come up toward evening and then you will have to go slower. Greetings to Father and Mother, and tell them we wish them a right merry Christmas.” She kissed them each on the cheek, and hastened them forth. But she accompanied them through the garden, let them out by the rear gate, shut it again, and came back into the house.
The children went past the thin sheets of cat’s-ice beside their grandfather’s mill, crossed the fields and turned up toward the rising meadows.
When they had come to the heights covered with scattered trees and thickets of scrub, already mentioned, some few snowflakes floated slowly down.
“See there, Sanna,” said the lad. “I knew it would snow; remember when we left home, we could still see the sun, as red as the lamp over the Holy Sepulcher in church during Holy Week, and now we can’t see even the faintest ray and there’s only gray fog up there over the tree-tops. That always means snow.”
The children walked on more briskly, and Sanna was delighted whenever she caught a falling flake on the sleeve of her dark coat and it did not melt for a long time. When finally they came to the further fringe of the Millsdorf heights before entering the dark woods on the col, the serried wall of pines was already prettily flecked with the fast-falling snow. They now entered the deep woods, the longest part of the remaining way home. Up and up, from the fringe of the forest, the ground rises till one comes to the red post of the wayside shrine, from where as we said before the road turns off down to Gschaid. The ascent through the woods is so steep from the Millsdorf side that the road does not lead straight up but in wide serpentines, west to east and east to west. At each side of the road, the whole way up to the shrine and down to the meadows of Gschaid, there are impenetrable densely towering woods that thin only a little as one gains the valley level and comes out on the meadows in the valley of Gschaid. The col itself, though but a small link between two great ranges, would, if set on the floor of the valley, be a considerable mountain-chain.
The first thing that struck the children on entering the woods, was that the frozen ground had a whitish look as though meal had been scattered; the heads of some of the grasses by the road and amongst the trees were drooping with the weight of snow on them and the many green pine and fir ends, reaching out like hands, held up little thistledown pyramids.
“Is it snowing at home now, where father is?” asked Sanna.
“Certainly,” answered her brother, “getting colder, too, and you’ll see tomorrow, the whole pond will be frozen over.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said the child.
She all but doubled her short steps to keep pace with the lad as he strode along.
They went steadily up the winding road, now west to east, now east to west. The wind predicted by their grandmother had not come up; the air, on the contrary, was so still not a twig or a branch stirred; in fact it felt warmer in the woods, as is usual, in winter, among spaced objects like tree-trunks, and the flakes kept falling thicker and thicker so the ground was already white, and the woods began to gray and take on a dusty look, with snow settling upon the garments and hats of both the boy and his sister.
The children were delighted. They set their feet on the soft down and eagerly looked for places where it seemed thicker so they could make believe they were already deep in it. They did not shake the snow from their clothing. There had descended upon everything a pervading sense of peace. Not the sound of a bird, although a few birds usually flit about the woods even in winter, and the children on the way to Millsdorf that morning had heard them twitter; they did not see any, either flying or on branches, and the whole forest was as though dead.
Since the footprints behind were their own and the snow ahead lay white and unbroken, it was evident that they were the only ones crossing the col that day.
They kept on in the same direction, now coming toward trees, now leaving them behind, and where the underbrush was thick they could even see the snow lying on the twigs.
Their spirits were still rising, for the flakes fell thicker and thicker and in a little while they did not have to look for snow to wade in, because it lay so thick it felt soft to the feet everywhere, and even came up around their shoes; and it was so still, so intimate, it seemed as if they could almost hear the rustle of the flakes settling on the pine needles.
“Shall we see the baker’s post today, I wonder,” asked the little girl, “for it’s fallen down and will be snowed on, so the red will be white.”
“We’ll see it, just the same,” said the lad, “we’ll see it lying there even if the snow does fall on it and make it white for it’s a good thick post and the black iron cross on top would always stick up.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
In the meantime, while they kept on, the snow became so thick they could see only the nearest trees.
They could not feel the hardness of the road or the ridges of the wheel-ruts; the road was an even softness everywhere because of the snow, and one could distinguish it only as it wound on through the forest smooth and white like a ribbon. Every bough was mantled in fairest white.
The children were walking now in the middle of the road, their little feet ploughing through snow that slowed their steps, for the going was harder. The lad pulled his jacket together at the collar so the snow would not fall on the back of his neck, and shoved his hat further down about his ears for protection. He also drew the shawl tighter, that his mother had folded about his little sister, and pulled it out over her forehead in a little roof.
The wind predicted by their grandmother had not yet come up, but on the other hand the snowfall had by degrees become so heavy that after a while even the nearest trees were indistinct and stood in the blur like powdery sacks.
The children pushed on. They shrank down into their coats and pushed on.
Sanna took hold of the shoulder-strap by which Conrad’s bag was suspended, and with her little hand clutching the strap, they wended their way.
They were still not as far as the wayside memorial. The lad could not be sure of the time because there was no sun, and everything was the same monotonous gray.
“Will we be at the post soon?” asked Sanna.
“I don’t know,” answered her brother. “This time, I can’t make out the trees, or the road because it is so white. We may not see the post at all, because the
re is so much snow it will be covered up, and hardly a grass-blade or arm of the cross will stick out. But that’s nothing. We’ll just keep straight on; the road leads through the trees and when it gets to the place where the post is, then it will start downhill and we keep right on it and when it comes out of the woods we are in Gschaid meadows; then comes the footbridge, and we’re not far from home.”
On they went, climbing the path. Their footprints did not show for long now, since the unusually heavy snow blotted them out at once. The quick-falling flakes no longer made even a ticking sound on the needles as they fell but imperceptibly merged with the deep white already mantling the ground.
The children drew their wraps still closer to keep the ever-falling snow from working in on all sides.
They quickened their steps and the road was still climbing.
After a great while they had not yet reached the place where the memorial post was supposed to be, from which the path to Gschaid turned off downhill.
At last they came to a tract with not a tree on it.
“I don’t see any trees,” said Sanna.
“Perhaps the road is so wide we can’t see them because of the snow,” said the lad.
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