"The mill-wheel--now--is broken!"
"The mill-wheel--now--is broken!"
"No, my child, it is not broken," his eyes filling with tears, "it will not be broken--notours--it will go on turning--as long as we live."--
She shakes her head passionately and closes her eyes, as though beholding visions.
"And what makes such things enter your head?" he continues. "Has not everything turned out better than we thought? Isn't Johannes with us too?--Don't we live together in happiness and content?--and work from morn till night?--and--and--aren't your people comfortable too? And don't we take care that your father has a good income--and"--
He groans and wipes the perspiration from his brow. He can think of nothing more--and now appeals to Johannes, who is standing with his face turned away and his head resting against the pillar at the entrance of the veranda.
"Why will you always sing such sad songs?" he growls at him. "I myself got to feel quite--I don't know what--when you began with them--and she--she is only a weak woman."
Trude shakes her head as if to say, "Don't scold!" Then she raises herself, murmurs, without looking up, a soft "Good-night," and goes into the house.
Martin follows her.
Johannes buries his head in his arms and dreams to himself. He sees her again as she raises herself to her full height with her eyes all a-gleam,--then suddenly sank down as if struck by lightning. Then he reproaches himself that he did not hasten to her side sooner, to prevent her from falling, for he was nearest to her, and not only as regards space!
Not only as regards space! As by a lurid flame--horrible, bloody-red--his brain is suddenly illumined! Now he understands what feelings inspired him on that midsummer night--why he flung the vase to the ground--he makes a movement as if he would shatter it a second time!--It is only for one moment--a moment of hellish torture--then the flame is suddenly extinguished, there is darkness once more--intense, pain-penetrated darkness!--He passes his hand over his brow, as if to fire the flame anew, but all remains dark,--and dark and mysterious remains to him what he has just experienced. He feels as though he must cry out, as if he must confide to the night this unintelligible agony in which he is wrestling. He drops on to his knees, on the very same spot where Trude sank down, rests his head on the edge of the bench and moans softly to himself.
Suddenly a door in the house slams. His brother's steps resound in the entrance.
He jumps up and sits down on the bench. Martin's figure, darkly outlined, appears on the veranda.
"Brother, brother!" Johannes calls out to him.
"Are you there, my boy?" the latter answers and throws himself with a deep sigh on to the bench. "Well, things are nearly all right again now--she has cried herself to sleep and now she is lying there quite calmly and her breath too comes quietly and regularly. I stood for a while at her bedside and looked at her. I am quite at a loss! Her child-like mind used to lie before me as clear as a mirror--and now all at once--what can it be? However much I think about it, I don't seem to get on to the right track. Perhaps she troubles because as yet there is no prospect of--of--yes, probably that's it. But I have always kept my longing quite to myself--didn't want to hurt her feelings--for of course, she can't alter the matter. And really, if one thinks about it, she is but a child herself and much too young to fulfil maternal duties. Why, one must have patience!" Thus he tries to talk away his soul's secret sorrow. Johannes remains silent. His heart is so full, so full. He wants to give his brother some proof of his affection and knows not how? He too has his own pain which he wants to work off, and, grasping Martin's hand, he says from the depths of his soul: "Oh, everything, everything will come right again!"
"Of course, why shouldn't it?" Martin stammers in consternation. He shakes his head, looks down thoughtfully for a while, then says, with an uneasy laugh: "Go to bed, Johannes.--That broken mill-wheel is haunting your imagination."
Next day Trude is lying ill in bed. She will see no one--even Martin as little as possible. Johannes slinks about unable to settle down to anything. Their meals are taken in monotonous silence. The shadows close down more and more round the Rockhammer mill.
But the sun breaks forth once more. On the fourth day Trude is half-way convalescent again, and Johannes may go into her room for a talk with her.
He finds her sitting at the window, with a white dress lying across her lap. She is pale and weak yet, but her features are glorified by an expression of peaceful melancholy such as convalescents are apt to wear.
Smiling, she puts out her hand to Johannes.
"How are you now?" he asks softly.
"Well--as you see," she replies, pointing to the white dress; "my thoughts are already occupied with the ball."
"What ball?" he asks, astonished.
"What a bad memory you have!" she says with an attempt at a joke. "Why, next Sunday is the rifle-fête."
"Yes, so it is."
"Perhaps you're not even looking forward to dancing with me?"
"Indeed I am!"
"Very much?--Tell me! Very much?"
"Very much!"
A child-like smile of pleasure flits across her pale, delicate face; she fingers the laces and frills, with undisguised delight at the white, airy texture.
This physical exhaustion seems to have restored to her mind its former, child-like harmlessness, and with a certain degree of anxiety she begins to enquire about her dancing shoes. She is once more, to all appearance, just the same girlishly thoughtless creature who once put out her hand with such unconstrained simple-heartedness to bid Johannes welcome.
He sits down opposite to her, lets the texture of the ball-dress glide through his fingers, and listens to her prattling with a quiet smile.
And everything she tells him is replete with sunshine and the very joy of existence. This had been her wedding dress which she had made and trimmed herself, for she could do that as well as anybody. She would have liked to wear silk, as befitted the bride of the rich miller Rockhammer, but she could not scrape together sufficient money, and as for letting her intended give her her wedding dress--well, her pride would not permit that. To-day she felt almost sorry to undo the seams, for how many foolish hopes and dreams were not sewn into them?--But what else could she do?--she had got so much stouter since she was a married woman.
Then the conversation flies off at a tangent to the approaching rifle-fête, touches on her new acquaintances in the village and occasionally wanders off to the shoemaker's place in the town; but ever and again she comes back to the time of her engagement and tarries over the moods and events of those blissful days.
She seems to feel just like a young girl again. The smile that plays so dreamily and full of presage about her lips, is like the smile of a bride--as if the fete to which she is looking forward were her wedding.
All her thoughts henceforth tend towards the ball. While she is entirely recovering, while her eyes grow clear, and the color returns to her cheeks, she is meditating by day and by night how she shall adorn herself; she is dreaming of the bliss which in those looked-for hours is to dawn upon her, as though it were something totally new and beyond all comprehension.
Trumpets sound; clarionets shriek; the big drum joins in with its dull, droning thud.
Midst clinking and clanking, midst skipping and tripping, the guild march along the street in solemn procession. On in front ride two heralds on horseback--Franz Maas and Johannes Rockhammer, the two Uhlans of the Guard. Nothing would induce them to give up their privilege--even did it mean rack and ruin to the guild.
Franz's countenance is beaming, but Johannes looks serious--indifferent almost; what does he care about all these people from whom he has become estranged? He salutes no one, his gaze rests on none; but he is searching, he is mustering the lines of people,--and now, suddenly--his features glow with pride and happiness-he bows, he lowers his sword in salute:--over there at the street corner, with rosy-red cheeks, with beaming eyes, waving her handkerchief, stands she whom he seeks--his brother's wife.
She is laughing--she is beckoning--she pulls herself up by the railing, she jumps on to the curb-stone--she wants to watch him till he disappears in the whirling clouds of dust. With all this she nearly, very nearly, forgets Martin, who is walking along close to the banner. But then, why does he go marching on so quietly and stiffly, why does he stick his head so far into his collar?--Over there in the distance Johannes is beckoning just once more with his sword.
The rifle-range, the goal of the procession, is situated close to the fir-copse--which, seen from the weir, frames the meadow landscape,--and hardly a thousand paces straight across from the Rockhammer mill, which seems to beckon from over the alder bushes by the river. If those stupid rifle people did not make such a deafening noise one might easily hear the rushing of the waters....
"If only this hocus-pocus were already over," observed Johannes, and casts a longing look towards the "ball-room," a huge square tent-erection, whose canvas roof rises high above the mass of smaller stalls and tents grouped around. Not till afternoon, when the "King" has been solemnly proclaimed, may the members' friends enter the festival ground. The hours pass by; shots resound at intervals along the boundary of the wood. At noon comes Johannes' turn. He shoots--at random--in spite of the flowers which Trude stuck into his gun. "Flowers for luck," she had said, and Martin had stood by and smiled, as one smiles at childish play. ... As soon as his duties as a rifleman are fulfilled, he turns his back on the ranges and betakes himself into the wood, where nothing is to be heard of all the shouting and chattering and there is no sound but the echo of the shooting softly dying away into the air.... He throws himself down upon the mossy ground and stares up at the branches of the fir-trees, whose slender needles glisten and gleam in the rays of the midday sun, like brightly polished little knives. Then he closes his eyes and dreams. How strange the whole world has become to him! And how far removed everything seems which he ever lived through before! Not indeed that he has lived through much--women and care have played no great part in his life hitherto: and yet how rich, how full of glowing color it has always appeared to him! Now an abyss has swallowed up everything, and over the abyss rose-colored mists are undulating....
Two hours may have elapsed, when he hears distant trumpet blasts proclaim the election of a new king. He jumps up. Only half an hour more; then Trude will be coming.
At the shooting-stand he learns that the dignity of "king" has been allotted to his friend Franz Maas. He hears it as if in a dream; what does it concern him? His gaze wanders incessantly towards the highroad, where, through the dust and the glaring sun, crowds of gaily dressed female figures are approaching on foot and in carriages.
"Are you looking out for Trude?" asks Martin's voice suddenly, close behind him.
He looks up startled from his brooding. "Good gracious, boy, what's up with you?" asks Martin laughingly. "Have you taken your bad shot so much to heart, or are you sleeping in broad daylight?"
Martin has one of his good days to-day. Meeting all these people--he is one of the chief dignitaries of the guild--has roused him from his usual moodiness,--his eyes glisten and a jovial smile plays about his broad mouth. If only he did not look so awkward in his Sunday clothes! His hat sits right on his forehead, leaving full play to a bunch of bristly hair sticking up curiously over the brim, and below that there appear the white tapes of his shirt-front, which have worked out from under his coat collar.
"There she comes, there she comes," he suddenly shouts, waving his hat.
The flashing carriage, drawn by a pair of splendid Lithuanian bays, is the Rockhammer state coach, which Martin had had built for his wedding. Sitting within it--that white figure reclining with such proud dignity in one corner, and looking about with such distant seriousness--that is she, "the rich mistress of Rockhammer," as the people all round are whispering to each other.
"Look--Trude is giving herself airs," says Martin softly, pulling Johannes' sleeve.
At the same moment she discovers the brothers, and, throwing her affected bearing to the winds, she jumps up in the carriage, waves her sunshade in one hand, her kerchief in the other, and laughs and gives vent to her delight and prods the coachman with the point of her parasol to make him drive faster. Then, when the carriage stops, she gives herself no time to wait till the door is opened, but jumps onto the splash-board and from there straight into Martin's arms. She is in a state of feverish excitement; her breath comes hot; her lips move to speak, but her voice fails her.
"Quietly, child, quietly," says Martin, and strokes her hair, which to-day falls upon her bare neck in a mass of little ringlets. Johannes stands motionless, lost in contemplation of her.
How lovely she is!
The white, gauzy dress floats round her exquisite figure like an airy veil! And that white neck!--and those little dimples at her bosom!--and those glorious plump arms on which there trembles a light, silvery fluff!--and this plastic bust, which rises and falls like a marble wave!... She appears unapproachably beautiful, every inch a woman yet every inch majesty, for in his innocent mind the ideas "woman" and "majesty" are synonymous, and mean for him an indefinable something which fills him with bliss and with fear. His eyes are suddenly opened and are dazzled as yet with gazing at this regal type of female loveliness, beside which he has hitherto walked as one blind. How lovely she is! How lovely is woman! And now a torrent of confused words streams from her unfettered lips. She had nearly died of impatience.--And that stupid big clock,--and her lonely dinner,--and those silly dancing shoes which would not fit! They are too tight; they pinch frightfully--"but they look lovely, don't they?"
And she lifts up the hem of her skirt a little to show the works of art, light blue, high-heeled little shoes, tied across the instep with blue silk bows.
"They seem too short!" Martin remarks, with a doubtful shake of his head.
"That's just what theyare," she laughs, "my toes burn as if they were on fire! But I shall dance all the better for it--what doyousay, Johannes?" And she closes her eyes for a moment as though to recall vanished dreams. Then she hooks her arm in Martin's, and asks to be taken to her tent. The most notable families of the district have provided themselves with private dwellings--light huts or canvas tents which afford them night shelter, for the fête commonly drags on till early day. Trude had been herself the day before on the festival ground to superintend the erection of her tent; she had also had furniture brought in and wreathed the entrance gaily with leafy garlands. She may well be proud of her handiwork, for the Rockhammer tent is the finest of the whole collection.
While Martin seeks to wedge his way through the crowd, she turns to Johannes and says quickly and softly:
"Are you satisfied, Hans? Am I to your liking?"
He nods.
"Very much. Tell me--very much?"
"Very much."
She draws a deep breath, then laughs to herself in silent satisfaction.
The miller's lovely wife makes a sensation among the crowd. The strange farmers and land-proprietors stand and stare at her--the burghers' wives secretly nudge each other with their elbows; the young fellows from the village awkwardly pull off their hats; a whispering and murmuring passes through the throng wherever she appears. With serious mien and affecting a certain dignity, she walks along, leaning on Martin's arm, from time to time shaking back the curls which wave over her shoulders,--and when, in so doing, she throws back her head, she looks like a queen, or rather like a spirited child which is playing the part of a queen in a fairy tale, and hardly feels comfortable in the rôle.
When an hour later the first notes of the fiddles are heard, she calls out with a cry of delight! "Hans, now I belong to you."
Martin warns her to beware of cold and other evils, but in the midst of his speeches they are off and away. Then he resigns himself, pours himself out a good glass of Hungarian wine, and stretches himself on the sofa to take some rest.
All sorts of pleasant thoughts flit through his head. Hasn't everything arranged itself happily and satisfactorily since Johannes came to live at the mill? Have not even his own bad hours of tragic presentiment and haunting terror become less and less frequent? Is he not visibly reviving, infected by the harmless merriment of those two? Is not this very day the best proof that his antipathy to strange people has disappeared, that he has learnt to be merry when others are merry-making?--And Trude--how happy she is at his side!--That evening certainly!--Well, what of that! Women are frail creatures, subject to a thousand varying moods! And how quickly things have come right again! The words which Johannes spoke to him that night, come back to him; he clinks his full glass against the two empty ones which the youngsters have left behind them: "Good luck to you both! May our happy triple alliance continue to our lives' end!"--Meanwhile Trude and Johannes have squeezed themselves through the closely packed crowd, as far as the entrance to the dancing-room. Sounding waves of music swell towards them; like a hot human breath the air from within is wafted in their direction. In the semi-obscurity of the tent the couples are whirling along in one dense crowd, and flit past them like shadowy forms.
Johnannes walks as one a-dreaming. He hardly dares to let his gaze rest upon Trude; for even yet that mysterious awe has complete possession of him and seems to bind him round with iron fetters.
"You are so quiet to-day, Hans," she whispers, nestling with her face against his sleeve. He is silent.
"Have I done anything to displease you!"
"Nothing--no indeed!" he stammers.
"Then come, let us dance!"
At the moment when he lays his hand upon her she gives a start; then with a deep sigh she lets herself sink into his arms. And now they are whirling along. She leans her face with a deep-drawn breath upon his breast. Just in front of her left eye there flutters the rosette which he wears to-day as a member of the rifle-guild; the white silk ribbon trembles close to her eyelashes. She moves her head a little to one side and looks up at him.
"Do you know how I feel?" she murmurs.
"Well?"
"As if you were carrying me through the clouds."
And then, when they have to stop, she says: "Come out quickly, so that I need not dance with anyone else!"
She clutches hold of his hand, while he makes a passage for her through the crowd of people. Outside, she takes his arm, and walks at his side proudly and happily with glowing cheeks and dancing eyes. She laughs, she chatters, she jests, and he keeps pace with her to the best of his ability.--In the heat of the dance his bashfulness has entirely melted away. A wild gladness fires his veins. To-day she is his with every thought and feeling, his only, as he can feel by the trembling of her arm, which rests upon his more firmly with secret, sweet pressure; he can see it in the most gleaming glamour of her eyes as she raises them to his.
After a time she asks, somewhat reluctantly: "I say, mustn't we have a look what Martin is doing?"
"Yes, you are right," he replies eagerly. But nothing comes of this good resolution. Every time they happen to pass the tent something remarkable is sure to be taking place in the opposite direction, which gives them an opportunity of forgetting their intention.
Then all of a sudden, Martin himself comes towards them, beaming with pleasure and surrounded by a number of village inhabitants whom he is taking along with him to stand them treat. "Hallo, children!" he says, "I am just going to remove my general headquarters to the 'Crown' Innkeeper's booth; if you want a drink, come along with me."
Trude and Johannes exchange a rapid glance of understanding and simultaneously beg to be excused.
"Good-bye then, children, and enjoy yourselves thoroughly!" With that he goes off.
"I have never seen him in such good spirits," remarks Trude, laughing. "Indeed, no one could grudge them to him," says Johannes in a gentle voice, looking affectionately after his brother. He wants to kill the gnawing which has awakened within him at sight of Martin.
Evening has come on. The festive crowd is bathed in purple light. The wood and the meadow are ruddy red.
In a lonely nook at the meadow's edge, Trude stops and looks with dazzled gaze towards the faintly glowing sun.
"Ah, if only it would not set for us today!" she cries, stretching forth her arms.
"Well, command it not to!" says Johannes.
"Sun, I command thee to stay with us!"
And as the red ball sinks lower and lower, she suddenly shivers and says: "Do you know what idea just came into my head? That we should never see it rise again!" Then she laughs aloud. "I know it is all nonsense! Come and dance."
And they return to the dancing-tent. A new dance has just commenced. Fired by longing, entranced by contemplation of each other, they whirl along and disappear in a dark little corner near the musicians' platform, which they have chosen in order to avoid the searching gaze of the other dancers, who are all dying to make the acquaintance of the miller's lovely wife.
Trude's hair has loosed itself and is fluttering about unbound; in her eyes is a faint glow, as of intoxication: her whole being seems pervaded by the ecstasy of the moment.
"If only my foot did not burn like very hell-fire," she says once as Johannes takes her back to her place.
"Then rest awhile."
She laughs aloud, and when at the same moment Franz Maas comes to claim the dance of honor in his capacity of "rifle-king," she throws herself into his arms and whirls away.
Johannes puts his hand to his burning brow, and looks after the couple, but the lights and the figures melt away before his eyes into one heaving chaos: everything seems to be turning round and round--he staggers--he has to clutch hold of a pillar to prevent himself from falling; and when at that moment Franz Maas returns with Trude, he begs him to take charge of his sister-in-law for half an hour; he must go out for a whiff of fresh air.
He steps out of the hot, close tent, in which two candelabra filled with tallow candles diffuse an unbearable smoke--out into the clear, cool night. But here too are noise and fiddling! In the shooting booths the bolts of the air-guns are rattling, from the gaming tables comes the hoarse screaming of their owners, trying to allure people, and the merry-go-round spins along in the darkness, laden with all its glittering tawdriness and accompanied by shouting and clanging.
In between everything sways the black, surging crowd.
Behind the crests of the pine wood, which silently and gloomily towers above all the tumult, the sky is all aflame with glorious yellow light. Half an hour more and the moon will be pouring its smiling beams over the scene. Johannes walks along slowly between the tents.--In front of the "Crown" host's booth he stops and looks in through the window. But when he sees Martin sitting with a deeply flushed face amidst a swarm of rollicking carousers, he creeps back into the darkness, as if he were afraid to meet him.
From the adjacent tent comes the sound of noisy singing. He hesitates for a moment, then enters, for his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. He is received with a loud shout of delight. At a long beer-bedabbled table sits a host of his former schoolfellows, rowdy fellows, some of them, whom as a rule he seeks to avoid. They surround him; they drink to him; they press him to join their circle. "Why do you make yourself so scarce, Johannes?" one of them screams from the opposite end of the table, "and where do you stick of an evening?"
"He dangles at the apron-strings of his lovely sister-in-law," sneers another. "Leave my sister-in-law out of the game," cries Johannes with knitted brows. These proceedings sicken him; this hoarse screaming offends his ear; these coarse jests hurt him. He pours down a few glasses of cool beer and goes outside, with great difficulty succeeding in shaking off the importunate fellows.
He saunters toward the boundary of the wood and stares into its obscurity, already beginning to be animated by pale lunar reflections; then he proceeds for some distance beneath the trees, deeply inhaling the soft, aromatic fragrance of the pines. He is determined that by main force he will master this mysterious intoxication which seems to fever his whole being; but the further he betakes himself away from the festival ground the more does his unrest increase. Just as he is about to enter the dancing-room he sees Franz Maas hurrying towards him in breathless excitement. A vague presentiment of disaster dawns within him.
"What has happened?" he calls out to him.
"It's a good thing I've found you. Your sister-in-law has been taken ill."
"For heaven's sake! Where have you taken her?"
"Martin led her to your tent."
"How did it happen? How did it happen?"
"Some time before, I noticed that she had become pale and quiet, and when I asked her what was the matter, she said her foot hurt her. But in spite of that she would not sit still, and, while I was dancing with her, she suddenly broke down in the middle of the room."
"And then? What then?"
"I raised her up and drew her as quickly as possible to her chair, while I sent some one off to fetch Martin."
"Why didn't you send for me, man?"
"Firstly I didn't know where you were, and then, of course, it was the proper thing to send word first to her husband."
Johannes breaks into a shrill laugh. "Very proper, but what then?"
"She opened her eyes even before Martin arrived. The first thing she did was to send away the women who were crowding round her! then she whispered to me, 'Don't tell him that I fainted;' and then when he came hurrying in, looking quite pale, she went to meet him apparently quite cheerfully and said, 'My shoe hurts me; it is nothing else.'"
"And then?"
"Then he took her outside. But I just happened to see how she burst out sobbing and hid her face on his shoulder. Then I thought to myself, 'God knows what else may be hurting her.'" Johannes hears no further. Without a word of thanks to his friend he rushes off.
The canvas which covers the entrance to the Rockhammer tent is let down low. Johannes listens for a moment. Soft weeping mingled with Martin's soothing voice is audible from the interior, he tries to tear the curtain open, but it does not give way; it is evidently fastened down with a peg, "Who is there?" calls Martin's voice from the other side.
"I--Johannes!"
"Stay outside."
Johannes winces. This "stay outside" has given him a very stab at his heart. When there is a chance of being at her side to help her in her trouble,--of giving her peace and comfort, he is to "stay outside." He grates his teeth and stares with hungry eyes at the curtain, through the apertures of which a faint red gleam pierces.
"Johannes!" Martin's voice is heard anew.
"What do you want?"
"Go and see if our carriage is here."
He does as he is bid. He is just good enough to go errands! He inspects the rows of conveyances, and, when he does not find what he is seeking, he returns to the tent.
Now the curtain is drawn aside. There she stands--a little transparent shawl about her shoulders, looking pale and so beautiful.
"Just as I expected," says Martin, when he reports to him--"the carriage wasn't ordered till daybreak."
"But what now? Does Trude want to go?" he asks anxiously.
"Trude must!" says she, giving him a look out of her tear-stained eyes, which are already trying to smile again.
"Resign yourself to it, my child," answers Martin, stroking her hair. "If it were only the foot, it would not matter. But your crying just now--all this excitement--I think your illness is still hanging about you and rest will do you good. If only it did not take so long to fetch the carriage! I believe it would be best if you could walk the short distance across the fields--of course, only if you have no more pain. Can you manage it?"
Trude gives Johannes a look; then nods eagerly.
"The air is warm, the grass is dry," Martin continues, "and Johannes can accompany you."
Trude gives a start, and he feels his blood mount in a hot wave to his head. His eyes seek hers, but she avoids his glance.
"You can easily be here again in half an hour, my dear boy," says Martin, who takes Johannes' silence to mean vexation. He shakes his head, and declares, with a look at Trude, that he too has had enough of it now.
"Well then, good speed to you, children," says Martin, "and, when I have disbanded my party, I will follow!"
Johannes sends a look into the distance; the plain which lies before him, swathed in silver veils of moonlight, appears to him like an abyss over which mists are brewing; he feels as if the arm which is just being pushed so gently and caressingly through his were dragging him down--down into the deepest depths.
"Good-night," he murmurs, half turned away from his brother.
"Aren't you even going to shake hands?" asked Martin, with playful reproach, and, when Johannes hesitatingly extends his right hand, he gives it a hearty shake. What pain such a shake of the hand can inflict!
The din of the fête more and more dies away into the distance. The many-voiced tumult becomes a dull roaring in which only the shrill tinkle of the merry-go-round is distinguishable, and when the dance-music, which has been silent so long, commences anew, it drowns everything else with its piercing trumpet-blasts.
But even that grows more and more indistinct, and the big drum alone, which hitherto has played only a modest part, now gains ascendancy over the other instruments, for its dull, droning beat travels furthest into the distance. Silently they walk beside each other--neither ventures to address the other. Trude's arm trembles in his; her eyes rest upon the mists which rise up in the greenish light from the meadows.
She steps along bravely, though she limps a little and from time to time gives vent to a low moan.
They have perhaps been walking for about five minutes when she turns around and points with outstretched hand towards the twinkling lights of the festival ground, that glisten against the black back-ground of the pine-wood. The merry-go-round is spinning its glittering hoop round, and the canvas partition of the dancing-room sparkles like a curtain of woven flames.
"Look, how lovely!" she whispers timidly.
He nods.
"Johannes!"
"What is it, Trade?"
"Don't be cross with me!"
"Why--should I?"
"Why did you go away from the dancing?"
"Because it was too hot for me in the room."
"Not because I danced with some one else?"
"Oh! dear no!"
"You know, Hans, I suddenly felt so lonely and forsaken that it was all I could do to keep from crying. He might have said he didn't want me to dance with anyone else, I said to myself--for whom else did I go to the fête but for him? For whom did I adorn myself but for him? And my foot hurt me a thousand times worse than before; and then suddenly--well, you know yourself what happened."
He sets his teeth; his arms twitch, as if he must press her to him. Her head leans softly against his shoulder; her shining eyes beam up at him--when suddenly she gives a loud cry: her injured foot which she can only just drag along the ground, has hit against a pointed stone. She tries to keep up, but her arm slips away from his, and overcome by pain, she lets herself drop on to the grass.
"Just for a moment I should like to lie here," she says, and wipes the cold perspiration from her brow; then she throws herself down on her face and lies there for a while motionless. He grows frightened when he sees her thus. "Come on," he exhorts her, "you will catch cold here."
She stretches out her right hand to him with her face turned away and says, "Help me up," but when she attempts to walk, she breaks down once more. "You see, it won't do," she says with a faint smile.
"Then I will carry you," he cries, opening out his arms wide.
A sound, half of pain, half of joy, escapes her lips; next moment her body lies upraised in his arms. She sighs deeply, and, closing her eyes, leans her head against his cheek--her bosom heaves upon his breast; her waving hair ripples over his neck; her warming breath caresses his glowing countenance. More firmly does he press her trembling body to him. Away, away further, ever further away, even though his strength fail! Away, to the ends of the earth! His breath becomes labored, acute pains dart through his side, before his eyes there floats a red mist--he feels as though he were about to drop down and give up his ghost--but he must go on--further, further.--
Over there the river beckons; the weir's hollow roaring comes through the silent night; the splashing drops of water sparkle in the moonbeams.
She lets her head fall back upon his arm; a melancholy yet blissful smile plays about her half-opened lips; and now she opens her eyes, in whose somber depths the reflection of the moon is floating.
"Where are we?" she murmurs.
"At the river's edge," he gasps.
"Put me down."
"I must--I cannot."
Close to the water's edge he lays her down; then he stretches himself full length on the grass, and presses his hand to his heart and struggles for breath. His temples are throbbing, he is in a fair way to lose consciousness; but, pulling himself together with an effort, he bends his body towards the river, ladles out a handful of water and bathes his forehead with it.
That restores him to consciousness. He turns to Trude. She has buried her face in her hands and is moaning softly to herself.
"Does it hurt very much?" he asks.
"It burns!"
"Dip your foot in the water. That will cool it."
She drops her hands and looks at him in surprise.
"It has done me good," he says, pointing to his forehead, from which single drops of water are still trickling down. Then she bends forward and tries to pull off her shoe, but her hand trembles, and she grows faint with the effort. "Let me help you," he says. One pull--her shoe flies to one side; her stocking follows, and, pushing herself forward to the very edge of the bank, she dips her bare foot up to the ankle in the cooling stream.
"Oh, how refreshing it is!" she murmurs with a deep breath; then, turning to right and to left, she seeks a support for her body.
"Lean against me," he says. Then she lets her head drop upon his shoulder. His arm twitches, but he does not dare to twine it round her waist; he hardly dares to move. His breath comes heavily; his eyes stare on to the stream, through the crystal waters of which Trude's white foot gleams like a mother-o'-pearl shell resting in its depths.
They sit there in silence. Just in front of them, at the weir, the water's rush and roar. The spray forms a silver bridge from bank to bank, and the waves break at their feet. From time to time the soft night-breeze wafts hushed music towards them, and the monotonous droning of the big drum comes to them mingled with the dull note of the bittern.
Suddenly a shudder passes through her frame.
"What is the matter with you?"
"I am shivering."
"Take your foot out of the water at once." She does as she is bid, then draws from her pocket the dainty little cambric handkerchief which she had for the ball. "That is no good," he says, and with a trembling hand pulls out his own coarser handkerchief. "Let me dry you!" Silently, with a dumb, pleading look, she submits, and when he feels the soft, cool foot between his hands, everything seems to whirl before him; a sort of fiery madness comes over him, and, bending down to the ground, he presses his fevered brow upon it.
"What are you doing?" she cries out.
He starts up. In wild ecstasy their eyes meet--one wild, exuberant cry, and they lie in each other's arms. His kisses burn hot upon her lips. She laughs and cries and takes his head between her hands and strokes his hair and leans her cheek against his cheek and kisses his forehead and both his eyes.
"Oh, my darling, my darling! How I love you!"
"Are you my very own?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Shall you always love me?"
"Always! Always! And you--you will never again leave me alone like to-day so that Martin--"
Abruptly she stops short. Silence weighs upon them! What terrible silence! The big drum drones in the distance. The waters roar.
Two deathly pale faces gaze at each other.
And now she screams aloud. "Oh Lord, my God!" is the cry which resounds through the night.
Loudly moaning, he covers his face with his hands. Tearless sobs shake his frame. Before his eyes everything is aflame--aflame with a blood-red light as if the whole world were set on fire. Now it is all suddenly made clear as day to him! What dawned mysteriously within him in yonder midsummer night, what flashed like lightning through his brain on that evening when Trude broke down sobbing in the middle of her song--all now arises before him like a glowing ball of fire. Every flame speaks of hate; every ray flashes with torturing jealousy through his soul, every gleam pierces his heart with fear and guilty consciousness.
Trude has thrown herself face downwards upon the ground, and is weeping--weeping bitterly.
With bowed head and folded hands he gazes upon her fair form, lying before him in an agony of woe.
"Come home," he says tonelessly. She lifts her head and plants her arms firmly upon the ground; but when he attempts to help her up, she screams out: "Do not touch me!" Twice, thrice, she endeavors to stand upright, but again and again she breaks down. Then without a word she stretches forth her arms, and suffers herself to be drawn up by him. In silence he guides her feeble steps to the mill. Her tears are dried up. The rigidness of despair has settled upon her deathly pale features. She keeps her face averted and resistingly allows him to drag her along. Before the threshold of the veranda she loosens her arm from his, and, with what little strength is left to her, she darts away from him towards the house-door. Her figure disappears among the dark foliage.
The knocker gives forth its dull beats. Once--twice, then shuffling footsteps become audible in the entrancehall; the key is turned; a dark yellow ray of light beams out into the moonlight night.
"For heaven's sake, madam, how pale you look!" the maid ejaculates in a terrified voice.... The door closes with a bang.
For a long time Johannes keeps on staring at the place where she has disappeared.--A cold shiver which runs through him from head to foot rouses him at length. Absentmindedly he slinks across the moonlit yard,--strokes the dogs that with joyous barking drag at their chains,--casts an indifferent glance towards the motionless mill-wheel, beneath the shadows of which the waters glide along like glittering snakes. Some indefinable impulse drives him forward and away. The ground of the mill-yard burns beneath his feet. He wanders across the meadows, back to the weir--to the spot where he was sitting with Trude. On the grass there gleams her blue silk shoe, and not far from it lies her long, fine stocking. So she must have limped home with her bare foot and probably is not even conscious of the fact! He breaks into a shrill laugh, takes up both and flings them far into the foaming waters.
Whither shall he turn now? The mill has closed its portals upon him forevermore. Whither can he go now? Shall he lay himself down to rest under some haystack? He cannot sleep even if he does. Stay! He knows of a jolly set of fellows--though he despised them a little while ago, they will just suit him now.
When, at two o'clock in the morning, Martin Rockhammer has shaken himself free of his drinking companions and is stepping, in the happiest of moods, out on to the festival ground, when the bluish-gray light of dawning day is beginning to illumine the doings of these night-birds, he is met by a band of drunken louts, who, singing obscene songs, break in single file through the ranks of the promenading couples. They are headed by the locksmith Garmann, a fellow of bad repute who practices poaching by night and in whose train now follow other good-for-nothing scamps. Intending to turn them out of the place forthwith, Martin steps towards them. But suddenly he stops as if turned to stone; his arms drop down at his sides: there in the midst of this crew, with glassy eyes and drunken gestures staggers his brother Johannes.
"Johannes!" he cries out, horrified.
He starts back; his drink-inflamed face grows ashy pale; a frightened gleam flickers in his eyes--he trembles--he stretches forth his arm as if to ward him off--and staggers back--two--three paces. Martin feels his anger disappear. This picture of misery arouses his pity. He follows after Johannes, and, taking him by the arm, he says in loving tones: "Come, brother; it is late, let us go home." But Johannes shrinks back in horror at the touch of his hand, and fixing his gaze upon him in mortal agony, he says in a hoarse voice: "Leave me--I do not wish to--I do not wish to have anything more to do with you--I am no longer your brother." Martin starts up, clutches with his two hands at the slab of the table near him and then drops down upon the nearest bench as if felled by the stroke of an axe.
Johannes, however, rushes away. The forest closes in upon him.