Undine | Page 8

woman was so prompt in her reproof as to allow him no time
to answer. She commanded the maiden to rise, show better manners,
and go to her work. But Undine, without making any reply, drew a little
footstool near Huldbrand's chair, sat down upon it with her netting, and
said in a gentle tone--
"I will work here."
The old man did as parents are apt to do with children to whom they
have been over-indulgent. He affected to observe nothing of Undine's
strange behaviour, and was beginning to talk about something else. But
this the maiden did not permit him to do. She broke in upon him, "I
have asked our kind guest from whence he has come among us, and he
has not yet answered me."
"I come out of the forest, you lovely little vision," Huldbrand returned;
and she spoke again:
"You must also tell me how you came to enter that forest, so feared and
shunned, and the marvellous adventures you met with in it; for there is
no escaping without something of this kind."

Huldbrand felt a slight shudder on remembering what he had witnessed,
and looked involuntarily toward the window, for it seemed to him that
one of the strange shapes which had come upon him in the forest must
be there grinning in through the glass; but he discerned nothing except
the deep darkness of night, which had now enveloped the whole
prospect. Upon this he became more collected, and was just on the
point of beginning his account, when the old man thus interrupted him:
"Not so, sir knight; this is by no means a fit hour for such relations."
But Undine, in a state of high excitement, sprang up from her little
stool and cried, placing herself directly before the fisherman: "He shall
NOT tell his story, father? he shall not? But it is my will:-- he
shall!--stop him who may!"
Thus speaking, she stamped her little foot vehemently on the floor, but
all with an air of such comic and good-humoured simplicity, that
Huldbrand now found it quite as hard to withdraw his gaze from her
wild emotion as he had before from her gentleness and beauty. The old
man, on the contrary, burst out in unrestrained displeasure. He severely
reproved Undine for her disobedience and her unbecoming carriage
towards the stranger, and his good old wife joined him in harping on
the same string.
By these rebukes Undine was only excited the more. "If you want to
quarrel with me," she cried, "and will not let me hear what I so much
desire, then sleep alone in your smoky old hut!" And swift as an arrow
she shot from the door, and vanished amid the darkness of the night.
Huldbrand and the fisherman sprang from their seats, and were rushing
to stop the angry girl; but before they could reach the cottage-door, she
had disappeared in the stormy darkness without, and no sound, not so
much even as that of her light footstep, betrayed the course she had
taken. Huldbrand threw a glance of inquiry towards his host; it almost
seemed to him as if the whole of the sweet apparition, which had so
suddenly plunged again amid the night, were no other than a
continuation of the wonderful forms that had just played their mad
pranks with him in the forest. But the old man muttered between his

teeth,
"This is not the first time she has treated us in this manner. Now must
our hearts be filled with anxiety, and our eyes find no sleep for the
whole night; for who can assure us, in spite of her past escapes, that she
will not some time or other come to harm, if she thus continue out in
the dark and alone until daylight?"
"Then pray, for God's sake, father, let us follow her," cried Huldbrand
anxiously.
"Wherefore should we?" replied the old man. "It would be a sin were I
to suffer you, all alone, to search after the foolish girl amid the
lonesomeness of night; and my old limbs would fail to carry me to this
wild rover, even if I knew to what place she has betaken herself."
"Still we ought at least to call after her, and beg her to return," said
Huldbrand; and he began to call in tones of earnest entreaty, "Undine!
Undine! come back, come back!"
The old man shook his head, and said, "All your shouting, however
loud and long, will be of no avail; you know not as yet, sir knight, how
self-willed the little thing is." But still, even hoping against hope, he
could not himself cease calling out every minute, amid the gloom of
night, "Undine! ah, dear Undine! I beseech you, pray come back--only
this once."
It