"Farewell! The lonely sorrows of my heart
In sweetest melody are all enshrined
Lest thou shouldst guess how hard it is to part"
and that popular old romance:--
"Henry slept and at his side
Was his richly-dowered bride.
"At midnight hour the curtain wide
By cold, white hands was pushed aside,
And Wilhelmine he did see,
For from the grave had risen she."
Then Trude starts and gazes into the dusk with large, terrified eyes,
but she enjoys it intensely.
The holy of holies in the album is a part bearing the title "The Lovely
Miller-Maid."
"Where did you get that from?" asks Trude, who feels that the title
might apply to her.
"A friend of mine, a musician, had these songs in a big volume of
music, out of which I copied them. The man who wrote them is said to
have been called Miller and to have been a miller himself."
"Read, read quickly," cries Trude.
But Johannes refuses. "They are too sad," he says, closing the book;
"some other time."
And so matters rest. But Trude so persecutes him, pouting and
imploring, that he has to give way to her after all.
"Come this evening to the weir," he says--"I have to close up the
sluices. Then we shall be undisturbed and I can read to you--of course
only if--"
He winked across at the "office." Trude nods. They understand each
other admirably. After supper Martin withdraws to his retreat, pursued
by Trude's impatient looks, for she is dying to hear what secrets are
contained in the "Lovely Miller-Maid." Arm in arm they walk across the
meadow to the weir. The grass is damp with the evening dew. The sky
glows red and all a-flame. The dark pine wood which forms a sombre
frame round the picture is clearly silhouetted against the fiery
background. Louder and louder the waters rush towards them.
In the tumbling waves the glowing sunset is reflected and every drop of
frothy spray becomes a dancing spark. On the other side of the weir the
river lies like a dark mirror and the alders lay their black shadows
upon it and dip their image into its clouded depths.
Silently the two go to the weir. A narrow plank which in the center
carries a drawbridge, runs alongside the main beam. From this point the
sluices of the lock, six in number, and supported by solid pillars or
props, can be opened or closed at will by the miller. Now in the gentle
month of June the weir gives little trouble, but in early spring or
autumn at high water or during the drifting of the ice, when all the
sluices have to be opened wide and some of the supports to be removed,
so that the volume of water as well as the lumps of ice may pour down
unhindered, then one has to watch and put forth one's strength, or
there is danger of being dragged down along with the wood-work by the
seething mass. Johannes opens two of the sluices. That suffices for the
present. Then he throws the lever to one side and rests his elbow on
the rail of the drawbridge. Trude, who has so far watched him in
silence, hoists herself up on to the big beam which runs from shore to
shore on a level with the rail.
"You will get dizzy, Trude," says Johannes, anxiously looking down onto
the "fall," where over sloping planks the water shoots down in wild
haste and then rushes foaming into the depths below.
Trude gives a short laugh and declares she has often sat here for hours
and looked down without experiencing the least giddiness, and, if the
worst came to the worst, why he would be there. Full of suspense she
looks towards his pocket, and when he pulls out the book of poems she
sighs rapturously, in anticipation of delights to come, and clasps her
hands like a child ready to listen to fairy stories. The tender words
of the inspired poet flow like music from his lips.
"The miller's heart delights to roam"--Trude gives a cry of delight
and beats time with her feet against the wooden posts. "I heard a
mill-stream rushing."--Trude listens expectantly. "I saw the mill
a-gleaming."--Trude clasps her hands with pleasure and points to the
mill. With "Didst thou mean this, thou rippling stream?" the lovely
miller-maid comes upon the scene and Trude grows serious. "Had I a
thousand arms to stir." Trude gives slight signs of impatience. "No
flowret I will question, nor yet the shining stars." Trude smiles to
herself contentedly, "Would I might carve it upon every tree!" Trude
sighs deeply and closes her eyes; and now proceed the passionate
fancies of the young, love-frenzied miller, till they reach the cry of
joy which penetrates above the rippling of the brook, the rushing of
the mill-wheels, the song of the birds:
"The loved miller-maid is mine!" Trude spreads out both arms, a
smile of quiet happiness flits across her face, she shakes her head
as if to say, "What in the world can come after this?"--Then suddenly
commences the miller-maid's mysterious liking for green, the
hunting-horn echoes through the wood, the jaunty huntsman appears.
Trude grows uneasy, "What does the fellow want?" she mutters and hits
the beam with her fist. The miller, the poor young miller, soon begins
to understand.--"Would I could wander far away, yea, far away from
home; if only there were not always green wherever the eye doth roam."
Thus the burden of his mournful strain. Trude puts out her hands in
suspense and hope; why, it cannot be, things must come right again in
the end. And then:
"Ye tiny flowrets that she gave.
Come rest with me in my lonely grave."
Trude's eyes grow moist, but still she hopes that the hunter may go,
and the miller-maid think better of it; it cannot, it must not be
otherwise. The miller and the brook begin their sad duologue--the
mill-brook tries to console him, but for the miller there remains but
one comfort, _one_ rest:
"Ah! brooklet, little brooklet, thou wouldst comfort my pain,
Ah! brooklet, canst thou make my lost love return again?"
Trude nods hastily. "What has the silly brooklet to do with it? What
does it know of love or pain?"
And then--there comes the mysterious lullaby sung by the waters. Surely
the young miller must have fallen asleep on the brink of the rivulet--a
kiss will waken him and when he opens his eyes the miller-maid will be
bending over him and saying. "Forgive me, I love you as much as ever."
But nay--what is the meaning of those words about the small, blue
crystal chamber? Why must he sleep till the ocean shall have drunk up
the brook? And if the cruel maiden is to throw her kerchief into the
brook that his eyes may be covered, why, then the sleeper cannot be
lying on the water's brink, then he must be lying deep down--Trude
covers her face with her hands and bursts into loud, convulsive sobs,
and when Johannes still persists in reading to the end, she cries out
"Stop, stop!"
"Trude, whatever is the matter?"
She beckons him to leave her alone; her weeping becomes more and more
violent; her whole body sways, it seeks a support, it bends backwards.
Johannes gives a terrified scream and springs forward, catching her in
his arms. "For heaven's sake, Trude!" he gasps, breathing heavily.
Beads of cold perspiration stand on his brow--but she bows her little
head on his breast, flings her arms round his neck and cries her heart
out.--
Next day Trude says: "I behaved very childishly yesterday, Hans, and I
believe I only just missed falling down."
"You were already sinking," he says, and a shudder passes through him
at thought of that terrible moment. A sentimental smile crosses her
face. "Then there would have been an end once and for all," she
observes with a deep sigh, but forthwith laughs at herself for her
silliness.
The days pass by. Johannes has fulfilled Trude's keenest expectations
as a play-fellow. The two have become inseparable; and Martin, the
third of the party, can do nothing but look on silently and with a
good-natured grumble say "Yea" and "Amen" to all their pranks.
It is a pleasure to see them whizzing past, racing each other across
the mill-yard as if they had wings to their feet. Trude flies along so
that her feet hardly touch the ground, but in spite of that Johannes is
the quicker of the two. Even if it takes time, she gets caught in the
end. As soon as she finds that she cannot escape she cowers like a
little frightened chicken; then when his arms encircle her
triumphantly, her lithe body trembles as if his touch shook its very
foundations.
David, the old servant, very attentively watches these doings from a
dormer window in the attic, which he makes his customary stand; there
he begins scratching his head and mumbling all sorts of unintelligible
things to himself.
Trude notices him one day and laughingly points him out to Johannes.
"We must play some trick on that old sneak," she whispers to him.
Johannes tells her the amusing tale of how, years ago, he discovered
the corner where the old fellow was in the habit of stowing away the
flour he pilfered. "Perhaps we could do the same thing again?" he
laughs.
"Well, we must hunt," says Trude. No sooner said than done. The
following Sunday when the mill stands still and no servants or
apprentices are about, Johannes takes the bunch of keys and beckons to
Trude to follow him.
"Where are you off to?" asks Martin, looking up from the book he is
reading.
"One of the hens lays its eggs astray," said Trude quickly. "We want to
hunt for them." And she does not even blush. They ransack the stables
and barns, the storehouses and haystacks and especially the mill,--they
tear upstairs and downstairs, clamber up steep ladders and rummage in
the rubbish of the lumber attics.
About two hours have gone by in fruitless search, when Trude, who
has never lost courage, announces that in the furthest corner of the
store-house she has found what she was seeking. Beneath some rotten
shafts and worn-out cog-wheels, covered by the debris of the last ten
years, stand a few large bushel-sacks, filled with flour and barley;
besides which there are all sorts of useful trifles, such as hammers,
pincers, brushes and table-knives. Loudly rejoicing, her eyes
glistening, her face all dirty, her hair full of cobwebs, she emerges
from the cavity, and after Johannes has convinced himself that she has
seen aright, they hold council of war. Shall Martin be drawn into the
secret? No, he would be vexed and perhaps spoil their fun. Johannes
hits upon the right thing to do. He pours the contents of the sacks
into their proper receptacles and then fills them with sand and gravel,
but on the top puts a layer of lamp-black, such as the coachman uses
for blacking his leather trappings. After having, on the way, quickly
arranged everything as before, he considers his work completed. Both
depart from the mill filled with intense delight, wash their hands
and faces at the pump, help each other to get their clothes clean and
do their best to keep a straight face on entering the room. But Martin
at once notices the treacherous twitching of their mouths; he
threatens them smilingly with his finger, though he asks no further
questions....
Two--three days go by during which they are consumed with
impatience;--then one morning when Trude is in the garden Johannes
comes rushing down, breathless and red in the face with suppressed
laughter. She forthwith throws down her hoe and follows him then and
there to the yard. In front of the pump stands old David, helpless and
enraged, half white and half as black as a sweep. His face and hands
are coal black and his clothes are full of huge tar stains. From all
the windows of the mill the laughing faces of the mill-hands peep out;
and Martin walks excitedly to and fro in front of the house.
The scene is surpassingly comic. Johannes and Trude feel fit to die of
laughing. David, who very rightly suspects where he must look for his
foes, casts a vicious look at the two and makes a fresh attempt to
clean himself. But the tell-tale black sticks to everything as if grown
fast upon it. At last Martin takes pity on the poor devil, lets him
come inside the common-room and orders Trude, who is laughing very
tears, to find him an old suit of clothes.
At dinner-time the two tell him about their successful prank. He shakes
his head disapprovingly and thinks it would have been better to have
told him of their find. Then he mutters something about "28 years of
service" and "babyish tricks," and gets up from the table.
Trude and Johannes exchange meaning looks which say "spoil-sport!" The
affair affords them ground for amusement for three whole days.
On the following Sunday Martin makes an excursion across country to get
some old debts cashed. He will not be likely to return before evening.
The mill-hands have gone to the inn. The mill stands empty.
"Now I shall send the maids off too," says Trude to Johannes; "then we
shall be absolutely alone in the place and can undertake something."
"But what?"
"That remains to be seen," she laughs and goes out into the kitchen.
After half an hour she returns and says: "There, now they have gone,
now we can begin." Then they sit down opposite each other and
deliberate.
"We shall never again manage to have such a lark as last Sunday," sighs
Trude, and then after a while: "I say, Johannes!"
"What?"
"You really are a great boon to me!"
"In what way?"
"Since you came I have been three times as happy. You see--he is ever
so kind and you know--I am fond of him, very fond, but--he is always so
serious, so condescending, as if I were a silly, senseless child--and
don't you think I am hardworking and take care of his household as well
as any one older? Surely it's not my fault that I was born so full of
fun and it isn't, after all, a crime to be like that--but under his
eyes, when he looks at one so solemnly and reproachfully, why it spoils
all one's pleasure in any nonsense.... And when one has to sit there
quite still, it's sometimes so awfully full and so ..."
She stops and considers. She would like to pour out her grievances to
him, but hardly knows what they are?
"With you it is quite different," she continues, "you are a dear, good
fellow, and never say 'no' to anything. With you one can do as one
likes!--And besides, you haven't got his irritating smile which he puts
on when I tell him anything, as much as to say: 'I don't mind listening
to you, but of course you are only talking rubbish.' Then the words
seem to stick in my throat--whereas with you ... well, one can tell you
anything that comes into one's head."
She pensively rests her head on her two hands and moves her elbows
about on her knees.
"Well, and what is coming into your head now?" he asks.
She blushes and jumps up. "Catch me," she cries and barricades herself
behind the table; but when he attempts to pursue her she walks calmly
towards him and says; "leave that! We were going to undertake
something, you know.--Keep the keys handy; in any case--perhaps we
shall think of something on the way."
He takes the great bunch of keys from its peg and follows her out into
the yard, on which the hot midday sun is glaring.
"Unlock the mill," she says, "it is cool in there." He does as he
is bid, and with one wild leap she jumps down the steps into the
half-dark space which lies before them in Sabbath quiet.
"I should be frightened to be here alone," she says, looking round at
him, then she points to the door of the office, the light wood of which
gleams through the semi-obscurity, spreads open her fingers and
shudders.
"Has he never yet told you anything?" she whispers after a little
while, bending towards his ear.
He shakes his head. He grows somewhat oppressed in this close,
dimly-lighted place--he breathes heavily--he longs for light and fresh
air.--But Trude feels all the more comfortable in this vapor-laden
atmosphere, in this mysterious twilight, where through the closed
shutters stray slanting sunbeams glide like golden streamers onto the
floor, and form a play-ground for myriads of little dancing particles
of dust. The tremor which fills her is just to her liking;--she
crouches down, then stealthily creeps up the stairs as if on the
lookout for ghosts. When she reaches the gallery she gives a loud
scream, and when Johannes anxiously asks what ails her, she says she
only felt she must give vent to her feelings.
She climbs up to a mill-hopper, clambers over the balustrade and slides
down again on the banisters. Then she disappears in the darkness among
the machinery, where the huge wheels tower above each other in gigantic
masses. Johannes lets her do just as she likes; to-day there is no
danger, to-day everything is at a standstill.
A few seconds later she re-appears. She nestles up to Johannes' side,
looks about with startled eyes, then pulls from her pocket a small key,
hanging on a black ribbon. "What is this?" she asks softly.
Johannes throws a rapid glance towards the office door and looks at her
enquiringly. She nods.
"Put it back," he cries, alarmed.
She balances the key in her hand and gazes longingly at the shining
metal. "I once saw by chance where he hid it," she whispers.
"Put it back," he says once more.
She knits her brows, then she suggests with a short laugh: "That would
be something for us to undertake." With that she casts a timorous
side-glance at his face to try and explore his mood.
His heart beats audibly. In his soul there dawns the presentiment of
approaching guilt.
"It would remain between us two, you know, Hans," she says coaxingly.
He closes his eyes. How delightful it would be to have a secret with
her! "And after all, what is there in it?" she continues. "Why should
he be so mysterious about it, especially to us two, who are his next of
kin in the world?"
"That's just why we ought not to deceive him!" he replies.
She stamps her foot on the ground.
"Deceive indeed! It's a shame to use such a nasty expression!" Then she
says, pouting: "Well, then don't!" and prepares to return the key to
its hiding-place. But she turns it about in her fingers three or four
times, and finally remarks, laughing, "Perhaps it isn't the right one
after all."
She goes up to the door and with a shake of her head compares the
keyhole and the shape of the key--but,--then, with a sudden jerk, she
pushes the key into the lock.
"It fits, after all," she says, and looks with apparent disappointment
back over her shoulder at Johannes, who is standing behind her,
anxiously watching the movements of her hands.
"Turn it!" she says in jest, and steps back from the door.
A tremor passes through his body. Ah, Eve, thou temptress!
"Turn it and let me put my head in," she laughs, "you needn't look at
anything yourself."
Then a sudden rage takes hold of him; he lets the key fly back
with a jerk and pushes the door wide open, so that a bright stream of
light from the window floods towards them. Trude makes a disappointed
face. All they see is a plain, business-like room with bare,
whitewashed wooden walls. In the middle stands a large, roughly painted
writing-table on which lie samples of grain and ledgers. On one wall
hangs a bundle of old clothes, and on the opposite one a wooden shelf
with some blue exercise-books and a few plainly bound volumes upon it.
Johannes casts a few timid glances around, then steps up to the
book-shelf and begins turning over the title-pages. What an uncanny
collection! There are medical works on brain diseases, fractures of the
skull and the like, philosophical treatises on the heredity of passion,
a "History of Passion and its Terrible Consequences." "Method for
Self-Restraint," and Kant's "Art of Overcoming Morbid Feeling by Pure
Force of Will." There are literary works, too, but they nearly all
treat of fratricide as their subject. Side by side with such thrilling
romances as "The Tragic Fate of a Whole Family at Elsterwerda," are
Schiller's "Bride of Messina," and Leisowitz's "Julius of Tarent." Even
theology is represented by a number of little tracts on the deadly sins
and their remission. Besides these, the blue exercise-books contain
carefully made extracts and dissertations and morbid reflections upon
things experienced and mused over.
Johannes lets his hands drop. "My poor, poor brother!" he murmurs with
a deep sigh. Then he feels Trude's hand on his shoulder. She points to
a tablet hanging above the door, and asks in an anxious whisper: "What
does that signify?"
In large gold letters these words are there inscribed:
Think of Fritz!
Johannes does not answer. He throws himself into a chair, buries his
face in his hands and weeps bitterly.
Trude trembles in every limb. She calls him by name, puts her arm round
his neck, tries to remove his hands from his face, and, when all this
avails nothing, she bursts into tears herself. When he hears her
sobbing, he raises his head and looks about in a dazed sort of way. His
gaze rests on the clothes hanging upon the wall, boy's clothes of many
years ago. He knows them well. His mother used to keep them as relics
at the bottom of her linen-press, and once showed them to him with the
words: "These were worn by your little dead brother." Since her death
the clothes had disappeared. Nor had he ever thought of them again. A
shudder runs through his frame.
"Come," he says to Trade, who is still crying to herself, and they both
leave the office. Trade wants to get out of the mill forthwith.
"First take the key back," he says.
Together they descend the stairs leading down to the machinery, and,
when the key hangs in its old place, they both rush out into the open
air as if pursued by furies.
With this hour their intercourse has lost its old harmlessness. They
have become participants in guilt. The feeling of guilt rests with
terrible weight on their youthful souls. They pity each other, for each
reads the story of his own conscience in the other's silent depression,
suppressed sighs and ill-concealed absent-mindedness--but neither can
help the other.
How gladly they would confess their fault to Martin.--But it would not
do to go to him together and say, "Forgive us--we have sinned"--it
would really look too theatrical--and if one of them takes the
confession upon himself, he gains no mean advantage over the other.
They are both equally closely connected with Martin and whoever is the
first to break silence must perforce appear to him as the more upright
and less guilty one. Besides, they have vowed absolute secrecy to each
other and feel all the less inclined to break their word, as they are
afraid to converse openly on the subject.
Thus more and more a sort of clandestine understanding is nurtured
between them; every harmless word spoken at table has for them a
special, deep significance; every look they exchange becomes an emblem
of secret agreement.
Martin notices nothing of all this; only now and again it strikes him
that "his two children" have lost a good deal of their old cheerfulness
and that they no longer sing so merrily. He makes no remark, however,
for he thinks they may have quarreled and are still sulking with one
another.
The following week, when Martin has once again shut himself up in his
office, Trude takes heart and says: "I say, Hans, it is nonsense for us
to fret ourselves. We will let the stupid affair rest."