Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories - Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (reading well TXT) 📗

you can get those two voices to the 'Haute Noblesse,' for the next season it is ten thousand thalers in your pocket; and I shall only charge you ten per cent. for the suggestion."

"Suggestion, you blockhead! Why, the thought flashed through my head the very moment I heard the first note. But hush--there they are again."

From the cliff, sung to the air of a Tyrolese folk-song, came this stanza:


Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,
While the Alpine breezes blow,
Are thy golden locks as golden
As they were a year ago?
(Yodle) Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohlio-oh!


The effect of the yodle, in which both the baritone of the cliff and the Alpine soprano united, was so melodious that Mr. Hahn sprang to his feet and swore an ecstatic oath, while Fritz, from sheer admiring abstraction, almost stuck the lighted end of his cigar into his mouth. The soprano answered:


Tell me, Hansel in the valley,
While the merry cuckoos crow,
Is thy bristly beard as bristly
As it was a year ago?
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohli-oh!


The yodling refrain this time was arch, gay--full of mocking laughter and mirth. Then the responsive singing continued:

_Hansel_: Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,
While the crimson glaciers glow,
Are thine eyes as blue and beaming
As they were a year ago?
_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Ilka_: Hansel, Hansel in the valley
I will tell you true;
If mine eyes are blue and beaming,
What is that, I pray, to you?
_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Hansel_: Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,
While the blushing roses blow,
Are thy lips as sweet for kissing
As they were a year ago?
_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Ilka_: Naughty Hansel in the valley,
Naughty Hansel, tell me true,
If my lips are sweet for kissing,
What is that, I pray, to you?
_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Hansel_: Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,
While the rivers seaward flow,
Is thy heart as true and loving
As it was a year ago?
_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Ilka_: Dearest Hansel in the valley,
I will tell you, tell you true.
Yes, my heart is ever loving,
True and loving unto you!
_Both_: Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohli-oh!

For a few moments their united voices seemed still to be quivering in the air, then to be borne softly away by the echoes into the cool distance of the glaciers. A solitary thrush began to warble on a low branch of a stunted fir-tree, and a grasshopper raised its shrill voice in emulation. The sun was near its setting; the bluish evening shadows crept up the sides of the ice-peaks, whose summits were still flushed with expiring tints of purple and red.

Mr. Hahn rose, yawned and stretched his limbs. Fritz threw the burning stump of his cigar into the depths of the ravine, and stood watching it with lazy interest while it fell. The guide cleared away the remnants of the repast and began to resaddle the horses.

"Who was that girl we heard singing up on the Alp?" said Mr. Hahn, with well-feigned indifference, as he put his foot in the stirrup and made a futile effort to mount. "Curse the mare, why don't you make her stand still?"

"Pardon, your honor," answered the guide stolidly; "but she isn't used to the saddle. The girl's name is Ilka on the Hill-top. She is the best singer in all the valley."

"Ilka on the Hill-top! How--where does she live?"

"She lives on a farm called the Hill-top, a mile and a half from Mayrhofen."

"And the man who answered--is he her sweetheart?"

"Yes, your honor. They have grown up together, and they mean to marry some time, when they get money enough to buy out the old woman."

"And what did you say his name was?"

"Hansel the Hunter. He is a garnet polisher by trade, because his father was that before him; but he is a good shot and likes roving in the woods better than polishing stones."

"Hm," grumbled Mr. Hahn, mounting with a prodigious effort.


II.


It was in the autumn of 1863, only a few weeks after Mr. Hahn's visit to Ginzling and Dornauberg. There were war and rumors of war in the air. The Austrians and the Prussians were both mobilizing army-corps after army-corps, and all the Tyrolese youth, liable to service, were ordered to join their regiments. The Schleswig-Holstein question was being violently debated in the German and the English press, the former clamoring for blood, the latter counselling moderation. The Danish press was as loud-mouthed as any, and, if the battles could have been fought with words, would no doubt have come out victorious.

It had been a sad day at the Hill-top. Early in the morning Hansel, with a dozen other young fellows of the neighborhood, had marched away to the music of fife and drum, and there was no knowing when they would come back again. A dismal whitish fog had been hovering about the fields all day long, but had changed toward evening into a fine drizzling rain,--one of those slow, hopeless rains that seem to have no beginning and no end. Old Mother Uberta, who, although she pretended to be greatly displeased at Ilka's matrimonial choice, persisted in holding her responsible for all her lover's follies, had been going about the house grumbling and scolding since the early dawn.

"Humph," said Mother Uberta, as she lighted a pine-knot and stuck it into a crack in the wall (for it was already dark, and candles were expensive), "it is a great sin and shame--the lad is neither crooked nor misshapen--the Lord has done well enough by him, Heaven knows; and yet never a stroke of work has he done since his poor father went out of the world as naked as he came into it. A shiftless, fiddling, and galavanting set they have always been, and me then as has only this one lass, givin' her away, with my eyes wide open, into misery."

Ilka, who was sitting before the open fire-place mingling her furtive tears with the wool she was carding, here broke into a loud sob, and hid her face in her hands.

"You always say mean things to me, mother, when Hansel is away," sobbed she, "but when he is here, you let on as if you liked him ever so much."

The mother recognized this as a home-thrust, and wisely kept silent. She wet her finger-tips, twirled the thread, stopped the wheel, inspected some point in its mechanism with a scowl of intense preoccupation, and then spun on again with a severe concentration of interest as if lovers were of small consequence compared to spinning-wheels. Mother Uberta was a tall, stately woman of fifty, with a comely wrinkled face, and large, well-modelled features. You saw at once that life was a serious business to her, and that she gave herself no quarter.

"Humph!" she began after awhile with that indefinable interjection of displeasure which defies all spelling. "You talk like the witless creature that you are. Didn't I tell the lad, two years ago, Michaelmas was, that the day he could pay off the mortgage on the farm, he should have you and the farm too? And eight hundred and fifty florins oughtn't to frighten a man as has got the right spirit in him. And there was Ruodi of Gänzelstein, as has got a big farm of his own, and Casper Thinglen with fifteen hundred a-comin' to him when his grandfather dies; and you sendin' them both off with worse grace than if they had been beggars askin' you for a shillin'. Now, stop your snivellin' there, I tell you. You are like your poor sainted father,--God bless him where he lies,--he too used to cry, likely enough, if a flea bit him."

At this moment Mother Uberta's monologue was interrupted by a loud rapping on the door; she bent down to attach the unfinished thread properly, but before she had completed this delicate operation, the door was opened, and two men entered. Seeing that they were strangers she sent them a startled glance, which presently changed into one of defiance. The fire was low, and the two men stood but dimly defined in the dusky light; but their city attire showed at once that they were not Tyrolese. And Mother Uberta, having heard many awful tales of what city-dressed men were capable of doing, had a natural distrust of the species.

"And pray, sir, what may your errand be?" she asked sternly, taking the burning pine-knot from its crack and holding it close to the face of the tallest stranger.

"My name is Hahn, madam," answered the person whose broad expanse of countenance was thus suddenly illuminated, "and this is my son, Mr. Fritz Hahn. Allow me to assure you, madam, that our errand here is a most peaceful and friendly one, and that we deeply regret it, if our presence incommodes you."

"Ilka, light the candles," said Mother Uberta, sullenly.