Heidi (1899)/Part 1/Chapter 8

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On the following morning Sebastian had no sooner opened the front door for the Herr Kandidat and ushered him into the library than some one else rang the bell, but with such force that Sebastian rushed down the stairs with all his might, for he thought:—

"No one rings like that except Herr Sesemann himself; he must have come home unexpectedly."

He pulled open the door; a ragged boy with a hand organ on his back stood before him.

"What do you mean?" said Sebastian to him. "I will teach you how to pull doorbells! What do you want here?"

"I want to see Klara," was the reply.

"You dirty street urchin, you! can't you say Fraulein Klara,' as the rest of us do? What have you to do with Fräulein Klara?" asked Sebastian savagely.

"She owes me forty pfennigs," explained the boy.

"You are certainly not right in your mind! How do you know, anyway, that there is such a person as Fräulein Klara here?"

"I showed her the way yesterday; that makes twenty pfennigs; and then I showed her the way back again; that makes twenty more!"

​"You see what a fib you are telling; Fräulein Klara never goes out; she is not able to go out. Get you gone where you belong before I start you!"

But the boy was not at all frightened; he remained calmly standing still and said coolly:—

"But I saw her on the street. I can describe her; she had short, curly black hair, and her eyes are black, and her dress brown, and she does n't talk as we do."

"Oho!" thought Sebastian, chuckling to himself; "that is the little Mamsell, who has been in more mischief." Then he said, pulling the boy in:—

"You're quite right; follow me and wait at the door until I come out again. If I let you come in, you must play something; it will please Fräulein Klara."

He went upstairs, knocked at the library door, and was called in.

"There is a boy here who wishes to see Fräulein Klara herself," announced Sebastian.

Klara was very much delighted at this unusual occurrence.

"He may come right in," she said; "may he not, Herr Kandidat, if he wants to speak to me?"

The boy soon entered the room, and, according to his instructions, he immediately began to play his organ. In order to avoid the A-B-C's, Fräulein Rottenmeier was busying herself with all sorts of things in the dining-room. Suddenly she stopped to listen. Did the sound come from the street? and so near? How could the sound of a hand organ come from the library? And yet really! She rushed through the long dining​room and threw open the door. There,—she could hardly believe it,—there in the middle of the library stood a ragged organ-grinder, playing his instrument most diligently. The Herr Kandidat seemed trying to say something, but the words failed to come. Klara and Heidi were listening with beaming faces to the music.

"Stop! stop immediately!" exclaimed Fräulein Rottenmeier, coming into the room. Her voice was drowned by the music. Then she ran toward the boy, but suddenly she felt something between her feet; she looked on the floor; a horrible black creature was crawling under her skirts—a turtle. Fräulein Rottenmeier jumped in the air as she had not done before for many years, then screamed at the top of her voice:—

"Sebastian! Sebastian!"

Suddenly the organ-grinder stopped, for this time her voice was heard above the music. Sebastian, doubled up with laughter, stood outside the half-open door, for he had seen the jump Fräulein Rottenmeier made. Finally he entered. Fräulein Rottenmeier had thrown herself into a chair.

"Away with them both, the boy and that creature! Send them away immediately, Sebastian!" she cried to him. Sebastian readily obeyed. He led out the boy, who had quickly seized his turtle, then pressing something into his hand he said:—

"Forty for Fräulein Klara, and forty for playing. You did well"; whereupon he closed the door.

Quiet was once more restored in the library; the ​studies were resumed, and Fräulein Rottenmeier had settled herself in the room, in order that her presence might prevent a similar dreadful occurrence. After the study hours she intended to investigate the case and punish the guilty one, so that it would not be forgotten.

Soon there came another knock at the door, and Sebastian again came in with the information that a large basket had been brought, which was to be given immediately to Fräulein Klara herself.

"To me?" asked Klara in surprise and curious to know what it might be; "let me see at once what it looks like."

Sebastian brought in a covered basket and then hastened away.

"I think you had better finish your studies first and then open the basket," remarked Fräulein Rottenmeier.

Klara could not imagine what had been sent to her; she gazed with longing eyes at the basket.

"Herr Kandidat," she said, stopping short while she was declining a word, "may I not take just one little peep to see what is in the basket and then go right on with my lessons?"

"From one point of view I might be in favor of it, from another against it," replied the Herr Kandidat; "the reason for it would be that if your whole attention is directed toward this object"—

His remark could not be finished. The cover of the basket was not fastened, and suddenly, one, two, three, and then two, and then even more little kittens jumped out into the room and began to scamper around so ​unaccountably fast that it seemed as if the whole room were full of the tiny creatures. They jumped over the Herr Kandidat's boots, bit his trousers, climbed up

Fräulein Rottenmeier's dress, crawled around her feet, leaped up into Klara's chair, scratched, groped about, and mewed; it was utter confusion.

Klara was perfectly enraptured and kept exclaiming:—

"Oh, what cunning little creatures! How gayly they ​jump about! See! Look, Heidi, here, there! Look at that one!"

Heidi with delight ran after them into every corner. The Herr Kandidat, hindered from going on with his teaching, stood by the table, lifting first one foot and then the other to avoid the annoyance. Fräulein Rottenmeier at first sat speechless with horror; then she began to scream at the top of her voice:—

"Tinette! Tinette! Sebastian! Sebastian!" She did not even dare to rise from her chair, lest all the dreadful little creatures might jump at her at once.

Finally Sebastian and Tinette answered her repeated calls for help and put the kittens, one after another, back into the basket and carried them to the bed made for the two kittens that had arrived the night before.

This day again there had been no opportunity for yawning during the study hours. Late in the evening, when Fräulein Rottenmeier had recovered sufficiently from the excitement of the morning, she called Sebastian and Tinette up into the library to make a thorough investigation of the disgraceful proceedings. Then it came out that Heidi, in her expedition of the previous day, had been the cause of all that had happened. Fräulein Rottenmeier sat there pale with anger, and at first could find no words to express her feelings. She made a sign for Sebastian and Tinette to leave the room. She then turned to Heidi, who was standing by Klara's chair and had no idea what wrong she had done.

"Adelheid," she began in a severe voice, "I know ​only one punishment which could have any effect on you, for you are a barbarian; but we shall see whether you will not become civilized down in the dark cellar with lizards and rats, so that you will never let such things happen again."

Heidi listened calmly and wonderingly to her sentence, for she had never been in a frightful cellar; the room adjoining the Alm hut, which her grandfather called the cellar, and where the cheese and fresh milk were kept, was a pleasant, inviting place, and she had never seen any rats and lizards.

But Klara raised great objections to this:—

"No, no, Fräulein Rottenmeier, you must wait until papa is here; he has already written that he is coming soon, and I will tell him everything; then he will say what is to be done with Heidi."

Fräulein Rottenmeier dared make no objection to this decision. She rose, saying somewhat bitterly:—

"Very well, Klara, very well, but I too shall have a word to say to Herr Sesemann."

Whereupon she left the room.

Then followed two or three peaceful days, but Fräulein Rottenmeier did not get over her distress; the disappointment she had felt in Heidi kept coming before her eyes, and it seemed to her that since the little girl made her appearance in the Sesemann house everything had gone wrong and could never again be set right.

Klara was well contented; the days no longer seemed dull. It was Heidi who made the study hours pass ​quickly. The alphabet always confused her and she could never learn it. When the Herr Kandidat was in the midst of explaining and writing the forms of the letters, and in order to make them clearer, compared one to a little horn and another to a beak, she would exclaim with delight: "It is a goat!" or "It is the robber-bird!" The description awakened all sorts of thoughts in her brain, but no idea of the alphabet.

In the late afternoon hours Heidi would again sit beside Klara and tell her all about the Alm and her life there, until her longing for it became so intense that she would cry out:—

"I really must go home now! To-morrow I really must go!"

But Klara always quieted these attacks and showed Heidi that she must surely remain until her papa came home; then they would see what would happen.

One happy prospect Heidi secretly enjoyed caused her to yield and become contented once more. This was, that every day she remained she would be able to add two more rolls for the grandmother. Every noon and night beside her plate lay a lovely white roll, which she immediately put into her pocket, for she could not eat the bread when she thought how the grandmother had none at all and was hardly able any longer to eat the hard black bread.

Every day after dinner Heidi sat for two long hours quiet and alone in her room, for she was not allowed to run outdoors in Frankfurt as she did on the Alm; she understood this now and never did it any more. Neither ​did she dare to talk to Sebastian in the dining-room, for Fräulein Rottenmeier had forbidden that also, and she never dreamed of speaking to Tinette, whom she always avoided, for Tinette spoke to her in a scornful tone and was continually laughing at her, and Heidi understood her perfectly. So Heidi sat thinking to herself how the Alm was growing green again, how the yellow flowers were glistening in the sunshine, and how bright everything was—the snow and the mountains and the whole wide valley. She often felt as if she could not bear it any longer, so great was her yearning to be there. Her aunt had told her, moreover, that she might go home whenever she liked.

So it happened that one day she packed up her rolls in great haste in the big red neckerchief, put on her straw hat and started. But at the very door she encountered Fräulein Rottenmeier just returning from a walk. She stood still and in blank amazement gazed at Heidi from top to toe, and her eyes rested especially on the full red handkerchief. Then she broke forth:—

"What kind of an expedition is this? What does it mean? Have I not strictly forbidden you to go wandering about again? Now you are trying to start out another time, and looking for all the world like a tramp."

"I am not going to wander about; I only want to go home," replied Heidi, frightened.

"What? what? go home? You want to go home?" Fräulein Rottenmeier wrung her hands in her agitation. "Run away! If Herr Sesemann knew that! ​Run away from his house! Don't let him ever hear of it! And what is it that doesn't suit you in his house? Are you not better treated than you deserve? Is there anything you need? Have you ever in your whole life had a home, or a table or the service that you have here? Tell me!"

"No," replied Heidi.

"I know that perfectly well," continued the lady in great excitement. "You lack nothing, nothing at all; you are the most ungrateful child I ever heard of, and you don't know how well off you are."

Then all Heidi's pent-up feelings broke forth:—

"Indeed I am going home, for I have been away so long that Schneehöpli must be crying for me all the time, and the grandmother is expecting me, and Distelfinck will be beaten if Peter has no cheese, and here you never see how the sun says good-night to the mountains; and if the robber-bird should fly over Frankfurt he would scream still louder, because so many people live together and make each other wicked, and do not go up on the cliffs where it would be good for them."

"Mercy, the child is crazy!" exclaimed Fräulein Rottenmeier; and as she darted in alarm up the stairs she ran hard against Sebastian, who was coming down.

"Bring up that miserable creature at once!" she called to him as she rubbed her head, for she had received no gentle bump.

"Yes, yes, I'm all right, thank you," answered Sebastian, for he had been hit still harder.

​Heidi still stood, with flaming eyes, on the same spot, and her whole body trembled with excitement.

"Well, what have you been doing now?" asked Sebastian gayly; but when he really saw that Heidi did not move he patted her kindly on the shoulder and said comfortingly:—

"Pshaw! pshaw! the little Mamsell must not take it so to heart; just be merry, that is the best way! She almost broke my head just now, but don't be frightened! Well? still on the same spot? We must go upstairs; she said so."

Heidi then went up the stairs, but very slowly and quietly, and not at all as she was wont to go. That made Sebastian feel sorry. He went behind her and spoke encouraging words to her:—

"You must n't give way! You must n't be so sad! Only be brave about it! We have had a very sensible little Mamsell, who has never cried since she has been with us; other little girls cry a dozen times a day; that is well known. The kittens are gay, too, upstairs; they jump all around the floor and act like mad. By and by shall we go up there together and look at them, when the lady in there is away?"

Heidi nodded her head slightly, but so sadly that it went to Sebastian's heart, and he looked at Heidi quite feelingly as she stole away to her room.

At supper time that day Fräulein Rottenmeier said not a word, but kept casting strangely sharp glances at Heidi, as if she expected she would suddenly do some unheard-of thing; but Heidi sat as still as a mouse at ​the table and did not stir; she neither ate nor drank; but she had put her bread quickly into her pocket.

On the following morning, when the Herr Kandidat came upstairs, Fräulein Rottenmeier motioned to him secretly to come into the dining-room, and here she confided to him her anxiety, lest the change of air, the unwonted manner of life, and the new impressions had driven the child out of her senses; and she told him how Heidi had tried to run away, and repeated to him as much as she could remember of her strange words.

But the Herr Kandidat calmed Fräulein Rottenmeier and assured her he knew that, on the one hand, Adelheid was certainly somewhat eccentric, but, on the other hand, she was in her right mind, so that gradually, with the right kind of treatment, he would be able to accomplish what he had in view. He found the case more serious because he had not yet succeeded in mastering the alphabet with her, for she could n't seem to grasp the letters.

Fräulein Rottenmeier felt calmer and let the Herr Kandidat go to his work. Late in the afternoon she remembered Heidi's appearance on her intended journey, and she determined to replenish the child's wardrobe with some of Klara's clothing before Herr Sesemann should appear. She consulted with Klara about it, and as she agreed with her, and wished to give her a quantity of dresses and linen and hats, the lady went to Heidi's room to look into her closet and to examine the things she already had, and decide what should be ​kept and what disposed of. But in a few moments she came back again, looking very much disgusted.

"What a discovery I have made, Adelheid!" she exclaimed. "I never heard of such a thing! In your closet, a clothes closet, Adelheid, in the bottom of this closet, what do I find? A pile of little rolls! Bread, I say, Klara, in a clothes closet! And such a pile stowed away!"

"Tinette!" she then called into the dining-room, "take away the old bread in Adelheid's closet and the crushed straw hat on the table."

"No! no!" screamed Heidi; "I must have the hat, and the rolls are for the grandmother"; and Heidi was about to rush after Tinette, but was held fast by Fräulein Rottenmeier.

"Stay here and the rubbish will be taken away and put where it belongs," she said decidedly, holding Heidi back. But Heidi threw herself down by Klara's chair and began to cry in such despair, louder and louder, and more bitterly, and sobbed again and again in her distress:—

"Now the grandmother won't have any rolls. They were for the grandmother; now they are all gone and she won't have any!"

It seemed as if her heart would break. Fräulein Rottenmeier ran out. Klara was alarmed and perplexed by her distress.

"Heidi, Heidi, don't cry so!" she said imploringly, "only listen to me! Don't be so troubled; see, I promise you I will give you just as many rolls for the ​grandmother, or even more, when you go home, and then they will be fresh and soft, and those would become very hard, and were so already. Come, Heidi, don't cry so any more!"

It was long before Heidi could control her sobs; but she understood Klara's comforting words and took them to heart, else would she never have been able to stop crying. But she had to be reassured of her hope again and again, and so she kept asking Klara, while her sobs still interrupted her speech:—

"Will you really give me, for the grandmother, just as many as I had?"

And Klara kept saying: "Yes, indeed I will, and more, too; so be happy again."

Heidi came to supper with her eyes all red from weeping, and when she saw her piece of bread she had a fresh outbreak of sobbing; but this time she quickly controlled herself, for she realized that she had to behave at meal times.

Sebastian this time kept making the most significant gestures whenever he came near Heidi; he would point to his own head, then to Heidi's, then he would nod and wink as if to make her understand:—

"Be comforted! I have looked out for everything and made it all right."

When Heidi a little later went to her room, and was about to get into bed, she found her little crumpled straw hat hidden under the coverlet. With perfect delight she snatched the old hat out; in her joy she crumpled it still more, and then, tying it up in a hand​kerchief, she thrust it down into the deepest corner of her closet. Sebastian had hidden it under the coverlet; he had been in the dining-room at the same time with Tinette when she was called, and he had heard Heidi's cry of distress. Then he had followed Tinette, and when she came out of Heidi's room with an armful of bread, and the hat on top of it all, he had snatched the hat, exclaiming:—

"I will take care of that!"

So in great delight he had rescued it for Heidi, and that was what he meant at table by his gestures of consolation.