The Goose Girl, Harold MacGrath [classic books for 12 year olds .txt] 📗

which she wore only on Sundays and at the opera, and braided and beribboned her hair. It never occurred to her that there was anything unusual in the incident. It was only when she came out into the König Strasse that the puzzle of it came to her forcibly. Who was this old woman who thought nothing of writing a letter to her serene highness? And who were her nocturnal visitors? Gretchen had no patience with puzzles, so she let her mind revel in the thought that she was to see and speak to the princess whom she admired and revered. What luck! How smoothly the world was beginning to run!

Being of a discerning mind, she idled about the Platz till after nine, for it had been told to her that the great sleep rather late in the morning. What should she say to her serene highness? What kind of a curtsy should she make? These and a hundred other questions flitted through her head. At least she would wear no humble, servile air. For Gretchen was a bit of a socialist. Did not Herr Goldberg, whom the police detested, did he not say that all men were equal? And surely this sweeping statement included women! She attended secret meetings in the damp cellar of the Black Eagle, and, while she laughed at some of the articles in the propaganda, she received seriously enough that which proclaimed her the equal of any one. So long as she obeyed nature's laws and Heaven's, was she not indeed the equal of queens and princesses, who, it was said, did not always obey these laws?

With a confidence born of right and innocence, she proceeded toward the east or side gates of the palace. The sentry smiled at her.

"I have a letter for her serene highness," she said.

"Leave it."

"I am under orders to give it to her highness herself."

"Good day, then!" laughed the soldier. "You can not enter the gardens without a permit."

Gretchen remembered. "Will you send some one to his excellency the chancellor and tell him I have come from number forty Krumerweg?"

"Krumerweg? The very name ought to close any gate. But, girl, are you speaking truthfully?"

Gretchen exhibited the note. He scratched his chin, perplexed.

"Run along. If they ask me, I'll say that I didn't see you." The sentry resumed his beat.

Gretchen stepped inside the gates, and the real beauty of the gardens was revealed to her for the first time. Strange flowers she had never seen before, plants with great broad leaves, grass-like carpet, and giant ferns, unlike anything she had plucked in the valleys and the mountains. It was all a fairy-land. There were marble urns with hanging vines, and marble statues. She loitered in this pebbled path and that, forgetful of her errand. Even had her mind been filled with the importance of it, she did not know where to go to find the proper entrance.

A hand grasped her rudely by the arm.

"What are you doing here?" thundered the head gardener. "Be off with you! Don't you know that no one is allowed in here without a permit?"

Gretchen wrenched free her arm. She was angry.

"How dare you touch me like that?"

Something in her glance, which was singularly arrogant, cooled even the warm-blooded Hermann.

"But you live in Dreiberg and ought to know."

"You could have told me without bruising my arm," defiantly.

"I am sorry if I hurt you, but you ought to have known better. By which sentry did you pass?" for there was that about her beauty which made him suspicious regarding the sentry's imperviousness to it.

"Hermann!"

Gretchen and the head gardener whirled. Through a hedge which divided the formal gardens from the tennis and archery grounds came a young woman in riding-habit. She carried a book in one hand and a riding-whip in the other.

"What is the trouble, Hermann?" she inquired. "Your voice was something high."

"Your Highness, this young woman here had the impudence to walk into the gardens and stroll about as nice as you please," indignantly.

"Has she stolen any flowers or trod on any of the beds?"

"Why, no, your Highness; but-"

"What is the harm, then?"

"But it is not customary, your Highness. If we permitted this on the part of the people, the gardens would be ruined in a week."

"We, you and I, Hermann," said her highness, with a smile that won Gretchen on the spot, "we will overlook this first offense. Perhaps this young lady had some errand and lost her way."

"Yes, Highness," replied Gretchen eagerly.

"Ah! You may go, Hermann."

"Your highness alone with-"

"Go at once," kindly, but with royal firmness.

Hermann bowed, gathered up his pruning knives and scissors which he had let fall, and stalked down the path. What was it? he wondered. She was a princess in all things save her lack of coldness toward the people. It was wrong to meet them in this way, it was not in order. Her highness had lived too long among them. She would never rid herself of the idea that the humble had hearts and minds like the exalted.

As the figure of the head gardener diminished and shortly vanished behind a bed of palms, her highness laughed brightly, and Gretchen, to her own surprise, found herself laughing also, easily and without constraint.

"Whom were you seeking?" her highness asked, rather startled by the undeniable beauty of this peasant.

"I was seeking your serene highness. I live at number forty the Krumerweg, and the sick woman gave me this note for you."

"Krumerweg?" Her highness reached for the note and read it, and as she read tears gathered in her eyes. "Follow me," she said. She led Gretchen to a marble bench and sat down. Gretchen remained on her feet respectfully. "What is your name?"


[Illustration: She led Gretchen to a marble bench and sat down.]


"Gretchen, Highness."

"Well, Gretchen, sit down."

"In your presence, Highness?" aghast.

"Don't bother about my presence on a morning like this. Sit down."

This was a command and Gretchen obeyed with alacrity. It would not be difficult, thought Gretchen, to love a princess like this, who was not only lovely but sensible. The two sat mutely. They were strangely alike. Their eyes nearly matched, their hair, even the shape of their faces. They were similarly molded, too; only, one was slender and graceful, after the manner of fashion, while the other was slender and graceful directly from the hands of nature. The health of outdoors was visible in their fine skins and clear eyes. The marked difference lay, of course, in their hands. The princess had never toiled with her fingers except on the piano. Gretchen had plucked geese and dug vegetables with hers. They were rough, but toil had not robbed them of their natural grace.

"How was she?" her highness asked.

"About the same, Highness."

"Have you wondered why she should write to me?"

"Highness, it was natural that I should," was Gretchen's frank admission.

"She took me in when nobody knew who I was, clothed and fed me, and taught me music so that some day I should not be helpless when the battle of life began. Ah," impulsively, "had I my way she would be housed in the palace, not in the lonely Krumerweg. But my father does not know that she is in Dreiberg; and we dare not tell him, for he still believes that she had something to do with my abduction." Then she stopped. She was strangely making this peasant her confidante. What a whim!

"Highness, that could not be."

"No, Gretchen; she had nothing to do with it." Her highness leveled her gaze at the flowers, but her eyes saw only the garret or the barnlike loneliness of the opera during rehearsals.

Gretchen did not move. She saw that her highness was dreaming; and she herself had dreams.

"Do you like music?"

"Highness, I am always singing."

"La-la-la!" sang the princess capriciously.

"La-la-la!" sang Gretchen smiling. Her voice was not purer or sweeter; it was merely stronger, having been accustomed to the open air.

"Brava!" cried the princess, dropping book and whip and folding the note inside the book. "Who taught you to sing?"

"Nobody, highness."

"What do you do?"

"I am a goose-girl; in the fall and winter I work at odd times in the Black Eagle."

"The Black Eagle? A tavern?"

"Yes, Highness."

"Tell me all about yourself."

This was easy for Gretchen; there was so little.

"Neither mother nor father. Our lives are something alike. A handsome girl like you must have a sweetheart."

Gretchen blushed. "Yes, Highness. I am to be married soon. He is a vintner. I would not trade him for your king, Highness," with a spice of boldness.

Her highness did not take offense; rather she liked this frankness. In truth, she liked any one who spoke to her on equal footing; it was a taste of the old days when she herself could have chosen a vintner and married him, with none to say her nay. Now she was only a pretty bird in a gilded cage. She could fly, but whenever she did so she blundered painfully against the bright wires. If there was any envy between these two, it existed in the heart of the princess only. To be free like this, to come and go at will, to love where the heart spoke! She surrendered to another vagrant impulse.

"Gretchen, I do not think I shall marry the king of Jugendheit."

Gretchen grew red with pride. Her highness was telling her state secrets!

"You love some one else, Highness?" How should a goose-girl know that such a question was indelicate?

Her highness did not blush; the color in her cheeks receded. She fondled the heart-shaped locket which she invariably wore round her throat. That this peasant girl should thus boldly put a question she herself had never dared to press!

"You must not ask questions like that, Gretchen."

"Pardon, Highness; I did not think." Gretchen was disturbed.

But the princess comforted her with: "I know it. There are some questions which should not be asked even by the heart."

This was not understandable to Gretchen; but the locket pleased her eye. Her highness, observing her interest, slipped the trinket from her neck and laid it in Gretchen's hand.

"Open it," she said. "It is a picture of my mother, whom I do not recollect having ever seen. Wait," as Gretchen turned it about helplessly.

"I will open it for you." Click!

Gretchen sighed deeply. To have had a mother so fair and pretty! She hadn't an idea how her own mother had looked; indeed, being sensible and not given much to conjuring, she had rarely bothered her head about it. Still, as she gazed at this portrait, the sense of her isolation and loneliness drew down upon her, and she in her turn sought the flowers and saw them not. After a while she closed the locket and returned it.

"So you love music?" picking up the safer thread.

"Ah, yes, Highness."

"Do you ever go to the opera?"

"As often as I can afford. I am very poor."

"I will give you a ticket for the season. How can I reward you for bringing this message? Don't have any false pride. Ask for something."

"Well, then,