R ound about the narrow valley which is cut by the rapid Trauerbach, Bavarian mountains tower, their well timbered flanks scattered here and there with rough slides, or opening out in long green alms, and here at evening one may sometimes see a spot of yellow moving along the bed of a half dry mountain torrent.
Miss Ruth Dene stood in front of the Forester’s lodge at Trauerbach one evening at sunset, and watched such a spot on the almost perpendicular slope that rose opposite, high above her head. Some Jaegers and the Forester were looking, too.
“My glass, Federl! Ja! ‘s ist’n gams!”
“Gems?” inquired Miss Dene, excited by her first view of a chamois.
“Ja! ‘n Gams,” said the Forester, sticking to his dialect.
The sun was setting behind the Red Peak, his last rays pouring into the valley. They fell on rock and alm, on pine and beech, and turned the silver Trauerbach to molten gold.
Mr Isidor Blumenthal, sitting at a table under one of the windows, drinking beer, beheld this phenomenon, and putting down his quart measure, he glared at the waste of precious metal. Then he lighted the stump of a cigar; then he looked at his watch, and it being almost supper time, he went in to secure the best place. He liked being early at table; he liked the first cut of the meats, hot and fat; he loved plenty of gravy. While waiting to be served he could count the antlers on the walls and estimate “how much they would fetch by an antiquar,” as he said to himself. There was nothing else marketable in the large bare room, full of deal tables and furnished with benches built against the wall. But he could pick his teeth demonstratively — toothpicks were not charged in the bill — and he could lean back on two legs of his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and stare through the windows at Miss Dene.
The Herr F?rster and the two Jaegers had gone away. Miss Dene stood now with her slender hands clasped easily behind her, a Tam O’Shanter shading her sweet face. She was tall, and so far as Mr Blumenthal had ever seen, extremely grave for her years. But Mr Blumenthal’s opportunities of observing Miss Dene had been limited.
The “gams” had disappeared. Miss Dene was looking down the road that leads to Schicksalsee. There was not much visible there except a whirl of dust raised by the sudden evening wind.
Sometimes it was swept away for a moment; then she saw a weather-beaten bridge and a bend in the road where it disappeared among the noble firs of a Bavarian forest.
The sun sank and left the Trauerbach a stream of molten lead. The shadows crept up to the Jaeger’s hut and then to the little chapel above that. Gusts of whistling martins swept by.
A silk-lined, Paris-made wool dress rustled close beside her, and she put out one of the slender hands without turning her head.
“Mother, dear,” said she, as a little silver-haired old lady took it and came and leaned against her tall girl’s shoulder, “haven’t we had enough of the ‘F?rst-haus zu Trauerbach?”’
“Not until a certain girl, who danced away her color at Cannes, begins to bloom again.”
Ruth shrugged, and then laughed. “At least it isn’t so — so indigestible as Munich.”
“Oh! Absurd! Speaking of digestion, come to your Schmarn und Reh-braten. Supper is ready.”
Mother and daughter walked into the dingy “Stube” and took their seats at the Forester’s table.
Mr Blumenthal’s efforts had not secured him a place there after all; Anna, the capable niece of the Frau F?rster, having set down a large foot, clad in a thick white stocking and a carpet slipper, to the effect that there was only room for the Herr F?rster’s family and the Americans.
“I also am an American!” cried Mr Blumenthal in Hebrew–German. Nevertheless, when Ruth and her mother came in he bowed affably to them from the nearest end of the next table.
“Mamma,” said Ruth, very low, “I hope I’m not going to begin being difficult, but do you know, that is really an odious man?”
“Yes, I do know,” laughed her easy-tempered mother, “but what is that to us?”
Mr Blumenthal was reveling in hot fat. After he had bowed and smiled greasily, he tucked his napkin tighter under his chin and fell once more upon the gravy. He sopped his bread in it and scooped it up with his knife. But after there was no more gravy he wished to converse. He scrubbed his lips with one end of the napkin and called across to Ruth, who shrank behind her mother: “Vell, Miss Dene, you have today a shammy seen, not?”
Ruth kept out of sight, but Mrs Dene nodded, good-naturedly.
“Ja! soh! and haf you auch dose leetle deer mit der mamma seen? I haf myself such leetle deer myself many times shoot, me and my neffe. But not here. It is not permitted.” No one answered. Ruth asked Anna for the salt.
“My neffe, he eats such lots of salt — “ began Mr Blumenthal.
“Herr F?rster,” interrupted Mrs Dene — “Is the room ready for our friend who is coming this evening?”
“Your vriendt, he is from New York?”
“Ja, ja, Gn?dige Frau!” said the Forester, hastily.
“I haf a broader in New York. Blumenthal and Cohen, you know dem, yes?”
Mrs Dene and her daughter rose and went quietly out into the porch, while the Frau F?rster, with cold, round gray eyes and a tight mouth, was whispering to her frowning spouse that it was none of his business, and why get himself into trouble? Besides, Mrs Dene’s Herr Gemahl, meaning the absent colonel, would come back in a day or two; let him attend to Mr Blumenthal.
Outside, under the windows, were long benches set against the house with tables before them. One was crowded with students who had come from everywhere on the foot-tours dear to Germans.
Their long sticks, great bundles, tin botanizing boxes, and sketching tools lay in untidy heaps; their stone krugs were foaming with beer, and their mouths were full of black bread and cheese.
Underneath the other window was the Jaeger’s table. There they sat, gossiping as usual with the Forester’s helpers, a herdsman or two, some woodcutters on their way into or out from the forest, and a pair of smart revenue officers from the Tyrol border, close by.
Ruth said to the nearest Jaeger in passing:
“Herr Loisl, will you play for us?”
“But certainly, gracious Fraulein! Shall I bring my zither to the table under the beech tree?”
“Please do!”
Miss Dene was a great favorite with the big blond Jaegers.
“Ja freili! will I play for the gracious Fraulein!” said Loisl, and cut slices with his hunting knife from a large white radish and ate them with black bread, shining good-humor from the tip of the black-cock feather on his old green felt hat to his bare, bronzed knees and his hobnailed shoes.
At the table under the beech trees were two more great fellows in gray and green. They rose promptly and were moving away; Mrs Dene begged them to remain, and they sat down again, diffidently, but with dignity.
“Herr Sepp,” said Ruth, smiling a little mischievously, “how is this? Herr Federl shot a stag of eight this morning, and I hear that yesterday you missed a Reh-bock!”
Sepp reddened, and laughed. “Only wait, gracious Fraulein, next week it is my turn on the Red Peak.”
“Ach, ja! Sepp knows the springs where the deer drink,” said Federl.
“And you never took us there!” cried Ruth, reproachfully. “I would give anything to see the deer come and drink at sundown.”
Sepp felt his good breeding under challenge. “If the gracious Frau permits,” with a gentlemanly bow to Mrs Dene, “and the ladies care to come — but the way is hard — ”
“You couldn’t go, dearest,” murmured Ruth to her mother, “but when papa comes back — ”
“Your father will be delighted to take you wherever there is a probability of breaking both your necks, my dear,” said Mrs Dene.
“Griffin!” said Ruth, giving her hand a loving little squeeze under the table.
Loisl came up with his zither and they all made way before him. Anna placed a small lantern on the table and the light fell on the handsome bearded Jaeger’s face as he leaned lovingly above his instrument.
The incurable “Sehnsucht” of humanity found not its only expression in that great Symphony where “all the mightier strings assembling, fell a trembling.” Ruth heard it as she leaned back in the deep shade and listened to those silvery melodies and chords of wonderful purity, coaxed from the little zither by Loisl’s strong, rough hand, with its tender touch. To all the airs he played her memory supplied the words. Sometimes a Sennerin was watching from the Alm for her lover’s visit in the evening. Sometimes the hunter said farewell as he sprang down the mountainside. Once tears came into Ruth’s eyes as the simple tune recalled how a maiden who died and went to Heaven told her lover at parting:
“When you come after me I shall know you by my ring which you wi............