It was a midsummer night. The alder-tree sent forth its perfume. The
moonlight lay in silver veils upon the earth. There was great rejoicing
in the village. Tar-barrels were lighted, and the farm-servants and
maids were dancing on the green. The flames sent their glare far over
the heath, and the shrill sounds of the fiddle came sadly through the
night.
Paul stood at the garden fence and looked out into the distance. The
servants had gone to the midsummer-night’s fire, and his sisters had not
come home yet, either.
They had asked permission to visit the vicar’s daughter Hedwig, their
playmate, who was an unpretending, quiet girl, in whose company he
gladly trusted them.
Now he thought he would wait till they had all come home.
The moonlight drew him out onto the heath. It lay there in midnight
silence; only in the heather a linnet chirped from time to time, as if
in its sleep. The wild-pinks bent their red heads, and the golden-rod
shone as if it wanted to compete with the moonbeams. Slowly, with
hesitating steps, he walked on, sometimes stumbling over a mole-hill
or entangling himself in the tendrils of the plants. The dew sparkled
before him in shining drops. Thus he came to the region of the
juniper-bushes, which looked more elf-like than usual.
The wood stood silent like a black wall, and the moonbeams rested on it
like freshly-fallen snow. He found the place where years ago the hammock
had hung; in the weird twilight the open space showed through the dark
branches. It drew him on and on. Like a palace of dazzling marble the
White House, with its balconies and gables, rose before his eyes. Deep
silence enshrouded the manor-house; only here and there a dog barked and
relapsed into silence directly.
He stood before the trellised gate, not knowing how he had come there.
He grasped the bars with both hands and looked in. The wide yard lay
yonder before him, bathed in the light of the moon; the big farm-wagons,
which were ranged in a row before the stables, stood there in black
outline; a white cat crept along the garden fence; everything else lay
in deep sleep.
He walked on along the fence. On the ash-heap behind the forge lay some
fragments of glimmering coals, which looked in the darkness like burning
eyes. Here the garden began. High elm-trees bent their branches over
him, and an overpowering perfume of laburnums and early roses floated
through the trellis-work towards him. The gravel-strewn paths shone like
silver threads through the branches, and the sundial, which had been the
dream of his childhood, stood out darkly behind them.
The White House came nearer and nearer. Now he could almost look into
the windows. Here, too, all seemed asleep.
He had read here and there in the Liederbuch, too, that the lover used
to sing serenades to the queen of his heart on moonlight nights, to
the accompaniment of either the guitar or mandolin if this was at all
feasible. It had been thus in the beautiful days of chivalry, and in
Spain or Italy might still be so. That occurred to him now, and he
pictured to himself how it would look if he, Paul the simpleton, were to
play the lute here as a knight-errant, crowing longing love-songs at the
same time.
At this thought he laughed out loud, and then he remembered that he
carried his instrument about with him everywhere. He seated himself on
the grass, his back leaning against a post of the fence, and began to
whistle--shyly and softly at first, then ever bolder and louder, and as
usual when he was entirely given up to his feelings, he at last forgot
everything around him.
He awoke as out of a dream when he heard a rustling and creaking of
branches at the other side of the fence. He looked round amazed. Yonder
stood Elsbeth in her white dressing-gown with a dark ulster hastily
thrown over it.
At the first moment he felt as if he must run away, but all his limbs
seemed to be lamed.
“Elsbeth--what are you doing here?” he stammered.
“Ah! what are _you_ doing here?” she retorted, smiling.
“I--I was whistling a little.”
“And you came here for that?”
“Why should I not?”
“You are right--I am not going to forbid you.”
She had pressed her forehead against the trellis-work and looked at him.
Both were silent.
“Will you come in?” she asked then--probably not knowing what she said.
“Shall I climb the fence?” he retorted, quite innocently.
She smiled. “No,” she said, shaking her head; “they could see you from
the window, and that would not do. But I must speak to you. Wait; I will
come out and walk a little way with you.”
She pushed a loose bar aside and slipped out; then she gave him her
hand, and said, “You were right to have come; I have often longed to
speak to you, but you were never there.” And she sighed deeply, as if
the remembrance of sad hours overpowered her.
His whole body trembled. The sight of the maidenly figure, who in her
night-garb stood before him so chaste and unconscious, almost took away
his breath. His temples hammered, he bent his eyes to the ground.
“Why do you not speak to me?” she asked.
A confused smile passed over his face.
“Do not be angry,” he gasped.
“Why should I be angry?” she asked. “I am so glad to have you for
once quite to myself. But it is strange--quite like a fairy tale. I
am standing at the window, looking at the moon. Mamma has just gone to
sleep, and I consider whether I, too, might venture to go to bed, but my
thoughts are so restless and my forehead burns--I feel so uneasy. Then
suddenly I hear somebody whistling in the garden, so beautifully, so
plaintively, as I have only once heard it in my life, and that a long
time ago. ‘That can only be Paul,’ I say to myself, and the more I
listen the clearer it is to me. ‘But how does he come here?’ I ask
myself, and as I want above all things to make certain, I put on my
cloak and creep down--so--here I am now, and now come, let us go into
the wood; there no one can see us.”
She laid her arm in his. Silently they walked across the moonlit meadow.
And then suddenly she put both her hands up to her face and began to cry
bitterly.
“Elsbeth, what is the matter?” he asked, terrified.
She trembled; her soft figure shook with noiseless sobs.
“Elsbeth, can’t I help you?” he pleaded.
She shook her head hastily. “It’s all right,” she gasped; “it will soon
be over.” She tried to walk on, but her strength failed her. Sighing,
she sank down into the damp grass.
He remained standing before her, looking down at her. “Let tears have
their course;” that was the rule which he had already often experienced
in life. All his timidity had left him. Here was somebody to be
consoled, and he was a master at consoling.
When she had grown a little quieter he sat near her, and said, gently,
“Will you unburden your heart to me, Elsbeth?”
“Yes, I will,” she cried; “I have waited to do so these three long
years. So long have I borne it, Paul, and I was almost choked with the
burden, and have found no pitying soul in whom I could confide. Yonder
in Italy and at beautiful Capri, where everything laughs and rejoices,
I have often crept down to the sea in the middle of the night and cried
out in my agony, and in the morning I have come back and laughed, even
more than the others, for my mother--oh, mother, mother!” she cried,
sobbing afresh.
“Be calm; you have me now, to whom you can tell it,” he whispered to
her.
“Yes, I have you, I have you,” she gasped, and leaned her face on his
shoulder. “You see I have always known that; but what good did that do
me? You were far away, I was often nearly writing to you, but I feared
you might have become a stranger to me and would misunderstand me. And
since we are back I have only one thought: ‘I must confide in him, he is
the only one who has known grief, he will understand me.’”
“Tell me what it is, Elsbeth,” he urged.
“She will die,” she cried out aloud.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Who told you so?”
“The professor in Vienna who examined her. He wore quite a cheerful face
before her, and said, ‘If you are careful, you can live to a hundred
years old,’ but afterwards he sent for me, and asked me, ‘Are you
strong, young lady? Can you bear the truth?’ ‘I beg you to tell me all,’
I answered, ‘I must confide it to you,’ he said, ‘for you are the
only one who nurses her.’ And then he told me that she might die any
day--unless--and then he gave me a number of rules which she must
observe about eating and drinking and climate and excitement, and much
more. Since that day I tremble from morning to night, and tend her and
watch and find no rest. Sometimes the feeling comes over me, and I say
to myself, ‘You are young and want to enjoy life,’ and then I try to
be merry and sing, but every note chokes me and I collapse again. Of
course, I must show a cheerful face to mother, and to father as well.”
“But why do you not confide in him?” he interrupted her.
“Shall his life be poisoned as well?” she replied. “No, I had rather
bear it alone than see him suffer, too. He has a happy nature, and loves
her with all his soul--otherwise he is sometimes hasty and excitable,
but to her he has never said an angry word--let him hope as long as he
can--I will not undeceive him.”
She leaned her head on her hands and stared straight before her.
He remembered his mother’s fairy tale.
“Dame Care--Dame Care,” he murmured to himself.
“What do you say?” she asked, and looked at him with great, eager eyes,
hungry for consolation.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied, with a sad smile, “I wish I could help you.”
“Who could do that?”
“And yet perhaps I can,” he said, “you have only wanted somebody to
confide in, you are not so badly off as you think--indeed, Dame Care has
blessed you, too.”
“What does that mean?” she asked
And then he told her the beginning of that fairy tale which he had kept
in his memory so well.
“And how can one be freed from her blessings?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied, “mother never would tell me the end of
the fairy tale. I don’t think, either, there is any deliverance. Such
creatures as we are must renounce happiness of our own free will, and
however near it may be to us we may not see it--something sad always
comes between us and happiness. The only thing we can do is to watch
over the happiness of others and to make them as happy as possible.”
“But I should like to be a little happy myself,” she said, raising her
eyes to him trustfully.
“I wish I were as happy as you are,” he answered.
“If only this anxiety were not always with me,” she complained.
“Anxiety! you must let her be your friend, I have known her all my life,
and when I did not know why I quickly found some reason. It is not
so bad, either--if there were no anxiety, one would not know for what
purpose one lives. But only think how contented you might be. You see
nothing but merry faces surrounding you. Your mother feels happy in
spite of all her sufferings, does she not?”
“Yes, thank God,” she replied, “she has no idea how ill she is.”
“There you see! and your father has no idea of it, either. No care
weighs on them, they love each other, and love you as well. No angry
word is spoken among you, and when your mother at last closes her eyes
she will perhaps do so with a smile on her lips, and be able to say, ‘I
have always been very happy.’ Do tell me--what more can you wish for?”
“But she shall not die,’ cried Elsbeth.
“Why not? he asked, ‘is death so terrible?”
“Not for her but for myself.
“There must not be any question of one’s self,” he replied, pressing his
lips firmly together, “one must just try to bear it the best one can.
Death is only terrible when one has waited for happiness all through
life and it has not come. Then one must feel as if one had to get up
hungry from a richly spread table, and I should like to save any one
I love from that. You see I have a mother, too, she also wished to be
happy once, and even yet would like far too much to be so. I am the only
one who could take care from her shoulders, and I am not able to do so.
What do you think I must feel in this case? I see how she grows old in
sorrow and need, I can count the wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks.
Her mouth falls in and her chin grows long. It is a long time since
she spoke any loud word, from day to day she becomes quieter, and so,
quietly, she will die one day, and I shall be standing by and shall
say, ‘It is my fault, I have not been able to give her one single day of
happiness.”
“Poor fellow,” she whispered, “can’t I help you at all?”
“No one can help me as long as my father--” he stopped, terrified at the
course of his own thoughts.
Both were silent They sat there for a long time without moving, their
twenty year old heads leaning on their hands bowed with care. The
moonbeams lay like silver on their hair, which the soft wind of the
heath ruffled gently.
Then the shadow of a cloud passed over them They both trembled. They
felt as if the sad fairy whom they called Dame Care were spreading her
sombre wings over them.
“I will go home,” Elsbeth said, rising.
“Go, with God’s blessing,” he answered, solemnly.
She seized both his hands “Thank you,” she said, softly, “you have done
me much, much good.”
“And if you need me again--”
“Then I shall come and whistle for you,” she answered, smiling.
And then they parted.
As in a dream Paul walked through the dark wood. The fir trees rustled
softly, the moonbeams were dancing on the moss.
“It is strange,” he thought, “that they all tell me their woes,” and
he concluded from that that he was the happiest of them all. “Or the
unhappiest,” he added, meditatively, but then he laughed mysteriously
and threw his cap high in the air.
When he stepped out into the light on the heath he saw two shadows
flitting before him which disappeared in the misty distance.
Immediately after he heard something rustle in the juniper bushes.
He turned quickly round and saw another shadowy couple, who seemed to
sink into the ground behind a bush.
“The whole heath seems alive to-day,” he murmured, and added, smiling,
“of course, it is mid summer night.”
Soon after him the twins came home with wild hair and flushed faces.
They declared the vicar had told them their fortunes by cards till
midnight. They would soon get husbands.
Giggling, they slipped away into their bedroom.