ONLY ONE DANCE.
Raven Zachy, from the music stage, reached his glass to Barefoot. She
touched it with her lips and gave it back, when he said, “If you dance,
Amrie, I will play with the whole power of my instrument, so that the
angels shall come down to listen.”
“Yes,” said Amrie, half in sport and half in sadness; “but if no angel
come down to ask me, I fear I shall have no partner.” And now she
considered, Why it was necessary to have a policeman at a dance? Then
she thought, “He is a man like other men, although he wears a sword and
a laced hat, and before he became a policeman, he was a young fellow
like the others. It must be vexatious, that he is not allowed to dance.
But what is all this to me? I also must look on, and I am not paid for
it.”
A short time after, they were more quiet and moderate upon the
dancing-ground, for the “English Lady,” (thus in the village they
called Agy,) the wife of Councillor Severin, came with her children
to the dance. The respectable timber-merchant called for champagne;
a glass was presented to Agy, and she drank to the happiness of the
young couple. She knew how to please every one by a graceful word or
two. Upon the faces of all there was an expression of satisfaction.
She touched her lips to many of the flower-crowned glasses, presented
to her by the young fellows. Also the old women in the neighborhood of
Barefoot had much to say in praise of the “English Lady.” They stood up
long before she reached, and exchanged a word or two with them.
As soon as Agy had passed on, the jubilee, with singing, dancing, and
loud music, began again with new strength.
Farmer Rodel’s upper clerk came to Amrie, and she trembled, full of
expectation that he would ask her to dance; but he only said, “Please,
Barefoot, hold my pipe till I have gone through this dance?” Then many
of the young girls from her village came to her; from one she received
a jacket, from another a handkerchief, a neck-ribbon, a house-key.
She held them all, and still larger grew her burthen, as each dance
succeeded the other. She laughed at her own situation, for no one came
for her.
Now there was a waltz played so soft and tender, that it seemed as
though they might float upon it; and now a polka, so wild and gay,
that Hie! away they went springing and stamping, all eyes sparkling,
and all breathing joy. The old women, who sat in the corners,
complained of the heat and dust, but none went home.
See! Amrie started. Her glance is arrested by a handsome young man,
who, in the confusion, walks proudly up the room. It is the horseman
she met in the morning,--the one she answered so peevishly. All eyes
are turned upon him, as with his left hand behind, and with the right
holding a silver-mounted pipe, he walks up and down, his silver
watch-seals swinging here and there. How handsome is his black velvet
jacket, his full, black velvet breeches, and his crimson waistcoat.
But more beautiful than all is his well-shaped head, with close curled
brown hair. His forehead above the eyes is white as snow, although his
face is brown, and a full light beard covers cheeks and chin.
“That is a statesman,” said one of the old women.
“And what heavenly blue eyes,” said another. “They are at the same time
so roguish and so good-hearted!”
“Where can he come from?” said a third. “He is not of these parts.”
And a fourth added, “He is certainly a wooer for Amrie.”
The young man passed more than once up and down through the hall,
apparently searching with his eyes, when suddenly he stopped, not far
from Barefoot. He nodded to her. Amrie trembled, and a burning heat ran
through her veins; but she did not move. Ah, no, he certainly nodded
to some one behind her. He does not mean her. She made room for him to
pass. He seeks another.
“No, it is thee!” said the young man, offering his hand. “Wilt thou?”
Amrie could not speak; but what need of words? She threw quickly
all she had in her hand into the corner,--jackets, handkerchiefs,
tobacco-pipes, house-keys.
They stood side by side, and the young man threw a dollar to the
musicians. When Raven Zacky saw Amrie by the side of the stranger, he
made the walls tremble with his music. Not more joyful can it sound to
the blessed at the day of judgment, than now in the ears of Amrie.
She turned she knew not how. She was borne away by the stranger from
all surrounding objects. She floated upon air, and it seemed as though
they were alone, hovering therein. In truth, they both danced so well,
that involuntarily all the others stopped to look at them.
“We are alone,” said Amrie; and immediately after she felt the warm
breath of her partner, who answered,--
“Oh that we were alone! Alone in the world. Why cannot we dance on so,
till we die?”
“It seems to me exactly,” said Amrie, “as though we were two doves
soaring in the air Ju hu, up in the Heavens!”
“Ju hu!” shouted the young man, so loud, that his voice seemed to rise
in the air like a rocket.
Still more blessedly they swung round, till Amrie said, “Stay; has not
the music stopped? Do they yet play? I do not hear them.”
“Yes, indeed, they are playing still. Do you not hear now?”
“Ah, now, yes,” said Amrie; and she held her breath. Her partner
thought she might be exhausted and dizzy. He led her to a table, and
gave her refreshment, but still held her hand; and taking into the
other hand the Swedish coin that hung by her necklace, he said, “This
is in a good place.”
“It came from a good hand,” answered Amrie. “I received the present
when I was a little child.”
“From a relation?”
“No; the lady is not related to me.”
“That dance has done you good, it seems.”
“Oh, so much! But only think how many may be dancing the whole year,
and without music. And here it is so much better.”
“You are plump,” said the stranger, jokingly. “You must have good food.”
“It is not the food,” said Amrie, “but the appetite for it.”
The stranger nodded; and after a while he said, inquiringly, “You are
the farmer’s daughter--of----?”
“No; I am a servant,” said Amrie; and looked him steadily in the face;
but he would not cast down his eyes--the eyelashes trembled, but he
looked steadily at her. This contest and victory was the image of
what passed within. After this self-conquest, he said, “Come, shall
we have another dance?” He held firmly her hand, and their happiness
was renewed; but this time more calmly and steadily. They both felt
that this elevation of their souls into heaven must come to an end.
Resulting from this thought, Amrie said, “We have been happy together,
even if through our whole life long we should never meet again, and
neither of us know the name of the other.”
The young man nodded, and said simply, “Yes.”
Amrie, embarrassed, said again, after a while, “What we have once
enjoyed, no one can ever take from us; and whoever thou art, never
repent that you have given a poor girl for her life long the memory of
a happy hour.”
“I do not repent,” said the young man. “But you--have you not repented
the short answer you gave me this morning?”
“Ah, yes; there you are right,” said Amrie.
The young man asked, “Will you trust me so far as to walk in the
field?”
“Yes.”
“And will you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“What will your relations say?”
“I am answerable to none but myself. I am an orphan.”
Hand in hand they both left the dancing-hall. Barefoot heard whispering
and tittering behind her, and kept her eyes fixed upon the ground. She
was asking herself, “Have I not been too confident?”
Without, in the cornfield, where the first tender leaves were beginning
to shoot from their protecting sheath, they looked silently at each
other. No word was spoken. At length the young man seemed to ask, as
to himself,--“If I might only know how it happens, that some people at
the first glance can be so--so--confidential, as it were. How they can
understand what the face alone at first reveals?”
“There,” said Amrie, “we have saved a soul; for you know that when two
people have the same thought, at the same moment, a poor soul is saved.
At your first word I had the same thought.”
“Indeed! And do you know why it is so?”
“Yes.”
“And will you tell me?”
“Why not? Listen! I have been goose-herd.”
At this word the young man started, but he made believe rub his eyes,
and Barefoot, unembarrassed, continued,--“When one sits and lies down
so long in the fields alone, they think of a hundred things that never
come into the minds of others, and sometimes there comes a wonderfully
strange idea. Then, only attend, and you will find it is true! Every
fruit-tree looks, especially when you observe it as a whole tree,
just like the fruit it bears. Look at the apple-tree, when it is not
extended or pruned, does it not look like the apple itself? And so the
pear-tree, and the cherry. Observe them attentively, the cherry-tree
has a tall stem like the cherry itself--and so I think--”
“Ah! what do you think?”
“Do not laugh at me. As the fruit-trees look like the fruit they bear,
so is it, also, with men, and we instantly see it in their faces; only
the trees have an honorable, honest look, and men can dissemble. But am
I not talking nonsense?”
“No, you have not been goose-herd for nothing,” said the young man,
with strange mingled emotions. “It is pleasant talking with you. I
would gladly give you a kiss, if I did not fear it would be wrong.”
Barefoot trembled in every limb. She stooped to break off a flower, but
she left it there.
After a long silence the young man said, “We shall never see each other
again,--therefore it is better so.”
They went back to the dancing-hall, and danced again without a word
being spoken. When it was over, he led her to the table, and said,
“Now, I must say farewell! But take breath, and then we must drink a
glass together.”
He gave her the glass, but she put it down untasted, and he said,--“You
must drink it for my sake, to the very last drop.”
Amrie continued drinking, and when at last she held the empty glass in
her hand and looked round, the stranger had vanished. She went down to
the house door, and there she saw him not very far off upon his white
horse, but he did not look back.
The evening mist spread like a veil of clouds over the valley; the
sun was already down. Amrie said aloud, as to herself, “I wish it
might never be morning again,--always to-day, always to-day,” and she
stood lost in dreams. Night came quickly down. The thin sickle of
the moon stood just above the mountain, and not far from it, towards
Holdenbrunn, the evening star. One Berner wagon after the other drove
off. Barefoot stood by that of her family which was getting ready.
Then Rose came out and said to her brother, “that she had promised the
young men and maidens from their village to walk back with them, and of
course it is well understood that a farmer and his maid-servant cannot
go home together.” The Berner wagon rattled by. Rose must have seen
Barefoot, but she made believe not to observe her, and Amrie walked on
the way the stranger had ridden. “Where is he now?” she thought. “How
many hundred villages and hamlets lie in this direction, and who can
say where he has gone?”
Amrie found the place where early in the morning he had greeted her.
She repeated aloud the question and answer that had passed between
them. She sat again behind the hazel-hedge, where in the morning she
had slept and dreamed. A golden-hammer sat upon a slender spray, and
the six notes of her song sounded exactly, “What do you still do there?
What do you still do there?” Barefoot had to-day lived a whole life
through. Had it, indeed, been only one day?
She turned back to the village, but did not go up to the dancing-hall
again. Now she took the road again homewards by the Holdenbrunn; but
when half way, she suddenly turned back again. It seemed as though
she could not tear herself away from the place where she had been so
happy; and to excuse herself, she said, “It was not safe for her to go
home alone; and she would join some of the girls and young men of her
village.” As she came before the alehouse in Endringen, many from their
village were collected; but they merely greeted her with,--
“So, it is you, Barefoot?”
There was running backwards and forwards, and many who had been in a
hurry to get home, returned to dance once more. Young men from other
villages came up, and begged and pressed for only one more dance.
Barefoot returned with the rest, but only to look on. At last it was
agreed, that those who wished to continue dancing should be left behind.
Not without much trouble, the Holdenbrunner troop were collected before
the door of the house. A part of the musicians agreed to go with them
to the end of the village. Many a sleepy father of a family was drawn
to the window by the music; here and there came a married playmate, who
went no longer to dances, looking out to wish them “Good luck on the
way.”
The night was dark; they had taken long pine-branches as torches, and
the young fellows who bore them danced backwards and forwards with
them. Scarcely had they gone a few steps, after the music left them,
than they cried out, “that the torches dazzled and confused them,” and
they were extinguished in a ditch. Now several, both men and women,
were missed, and when they were called, answered from a distance.
Rose was followed by the son of Farmer Kappel from Lauterbach, and
scarcely had her companions joined her, when she cried out, “that she
would have nothing to do with them.” Some of the young men began to
sing, and others joined in, but there was no true harmony. Many jokes
were made by the grandson of the Plaster-grinder Monika, of which the
young tailor’s apprentice was the principal butt. At length they began
singing again, this time in unison, and it sounded full and clear.
Barefoot was always a good distance behind her village companions; they
suffered her to be alone, and that was the best they could do for her.
She was with them, and yet not of them; and as she looked often around
upon the fields and woods, how wonderful in the dark was the change.
The night is so strange, and yet so confidential. The whole world was
as wonderful to her as she had become to herself. As one step followed
another, she seemed to be drawn along without any volition of her own;
she knew not that she moved. She only knew that her thoughts ran here
and there, so confusedly, that she could neither overtake nor follow
them. Her cheeks glowed as though every star in the vault of Heaven
were a heat-inspiring sun, and sent its beams into her heart. At this
moment, as though she had herself begun, and herself had given the
tune, her own villagers sang the song that came to her lips in the
morning,--
“There were two lovers in Allgäu,
They were to each other so dear!
Alas! to the wars went the youth.
‘And, dearest, when com’st thou again?’
‘That can I, love, not to thee say,
What year, or what day, or what hour.’”
Now a serenade was sung, and Amrie joined in from the distance,--
A fair good-night! Dearest, farewell!
The world at rest,
I wake alone
With heavy breast.
A fair good-night! Dearest, farewell!
All joy be thine,
Though far from thee,
Sorrow be mine!
A fair good-night! Dearest, farewell!
To thee I’ll come
When parting’s o’er,
To thy sweet lips--
A kiss to bear.
Love, thou art mine, and I am thine!
This makes my heart so glad.
And ne’er shall thine be sad.
Dearest, farewell!
They came at length to the village, and one group after another fell
off.
Barefoot remained standing long by her parents’ house, under the
service-tree, thinking and dreaming. She wished she could go in and
tell Mariann every thing; but she gave it up,--“Why disturb her night’s
rest?” Then she went homeward. The whole village lay buried in sleep.
At length she entered the house. All within seemed more strange than
without,--so strange, she felt that she could not belong there. “Why
hast thou come home again? What wilt thou do here?” were the strange
questions that seemed asked in every noise. When the dog barked, when
the stairs creaked, when the cows in the stall lowed,--in every sound
was this question,--“Who is coming home? What do you do here?”
At last she entered her chamber, and sat quiet a long time, looking
at the light. Suddenly she seized the light, and placed it before her
little glass, so that she saw her own face. She asked herself, “Who
is this? Thus he must have seen me. So I must have looked,” was the
second thought. “Yet there must have been something there to please
him,--else why did he look at me so?” A quiet feeling of satisfaction
arose within her, and this was heightened by the thought, “You have now
been respected as a person; till yesterday you were always looked upon
as the servant and helper of others. Good-night, Amrie, you have lived
one day?”
But this day must come to an end. Midnight was over. Amrie laid one
piece after the other of her dress carefully away. “Ah, there is the
music again; listen, how the rocking waltz sounds!” She opened her
window; but there was no longer music. Its echo was in her ear! Below,
near Mariann’s, the cock began already to crow. She heard the footsteps
of men approaching; probably some belated home-goer from the wedding.
They sounded so loud in the night. The young geese began to gabble in
their enclosure.
“Yes,” she said to herself, “geese sleep only an hour at a time, by
night as well as by day. The trees are quiet, motionless. Why is a
tree so wholly different in the night from the day? Such a close, dark
mass, like a giant wrapped in his mantle. How much motion there still
is within the motionless tree! What a world of life there is there! Not
a breath of wind stirs, and yet there are drops from the trees. These
may be caterpillars and beetles falling. Ah, a quail calls! It must be
the one in the cage at the Heathcock’s. She does not know that it is
night. And look, the evening star, which at sundown was deep under the
moon, is now nearer and above the moon. The more we look at it, the
higher it becomes.”
“Does it know the glances of human beings? How still! Listen! How the
nightingale sings! Ah, this is a song! so deep, so broad! Can that be
one bird alone?” And now Amrie shivered; for as the clock struck one,
a tile, loosened from the roof, fell clattering to the ground. She
trembled as she thought of ghosts, but constrained herself to listen
again to the nightingale, till at length she closed her window. A moth,
that looked like a great flying caterpillar full of wings, had ventured
into the chamber, and fluttered about the light, gray and frightful.
Amrie seized him at last, and threw him out into the darkness.
She now lays her cap, handkerchief, and jacket in a drawer, where
unconsciously she seized upon an old school copy-book, preserved there,
and read therein, she knew not why, old moral maxims and sentences.
“How stiff and carefully are they written.” Yes, she might collect from
these leaves that she once lived in the past, for all her past life
seemed to have vanished.
“Now quickly to bed,” she cried; but, with her determined carefulness,
she smoothed out all her ribbons, undid every knot with fingers
or needle. Never in her life had she cut a knot, and now, in her
extraordinary excitement, her usual care and patience did not forsake
her. Every hard and embarrassing knot was patiently loosed. At last she
calmly and carefully extinguished her lamp, and laid down in bed. But
she found no rest, and springing up again quickly, and leaning upon the
open window, she looked out into the dark night, where the stars only
glimmered. In chaste modesty she covered her neck and bosom with both
hands.
And now there was within her a moment of feeling, so wordless, so
limitless, and yet so all embracing; a moment of death, and then of
life in the whole universe, in Eternity!
Yes, in the soul of this poor girl, in her garret, had opened all there
is in an endless life. All the height and the depth; all the bliss of
which man is capable; and this supernatural moment asks not, “Who is
it that I thus exalt?” for the eternal stars shine upon the humblest
cottage.
A gust of wind that blew the window-shutters together waked Amrie. She
knew not how she had got to bed, and now it was day.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]