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 s.p.a.ce!

Not only as regards s.p.a.ce! As by a lurid flame--horrible, b.l.o.o.d.y-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 h.e.l.lish torture--then the flame is suddenly extinguished, there is darkness once more--intense, pain-penetrated darkness!--He pa.s.ses 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-fete."

"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 sc.r.a.pe 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-fete, 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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. .h.i.therto 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.