Title: The Silent Mill
Author: Sudermann, Hermann, 1857-1928
Language: English
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                            THE SILENT MILL



                                  THE
                              SILENT MILL



                                   BY
                           HERMANN SUDERMANN



                                NEW YORK
                               BRENTANO'S
                               PUBLISHERS



                          Copyright, 1919, by
                               BRENTANO'S

                               *   *   *

                          Copyright, 1917, by
                        Story Press Corporation

                               *   *   *

                         _All rights reserved_



                            THE SILENT MILL


No one can tell how many years ago it is was since the "Silent Mill"
first received its name. As long as I can remember it has been an old,
tumble-down structure, an ancient relic of long-forgotten times.

Old, and weather-beaten, and roofless, its crumbling walls stretch
upwards toward the sky, giving free access to every gust of wind. Two
large, round stones that once, maybe, bravely fulfilled their task,
have broken through the rotten wood-work and, obeying the natural law
of gravitation, have wedged themselves deep into the ground.

The large mill-wheel hangs awry between its moulding supports. The
paddles are broken off, and only the spokes stick up into the air, like
arms stretched forth to implore the "coup de grâce."

Moss and lichen have clothed all in green, and here and there some
water-cress puts forth its sickly green, sodden growth. From a
half-broken pipe the water runs slowly down, trickles in sleepy
monotony onto the spokes and breaks there, filling the surrounding air
with fine, drizzling spray. Under a gray thicket of alders the
little rivulet lies hidden in malodorous slothfulness, washed full of
water-weeds and frog-spawn, choked up with mare's tail and flowering
rushes. Only in the middle there trickles still a tiny stream of thick,
black water, in which the little palegreen leaves of the duck-weed
lazily drift along.

But those long years ago the mill-stream flowed right gayly and
jauntily; snow-white foam gleamed at the weir; the merry chatter of the
wheels resounded as far as the village; in long rows the carts drove in
and out of the mill-yard; and far into the distance there echoed the
mighty voice of the old miller.

Rockhammer was his name, and all who saw him felt that he did honor to
it, too. What a man he was! He had it in him to blast rocks. Of course
there was no such thing as trying to bully or contradict him, for it
only served to make him perfectly wild with rage: he would clench his
fists; the veins on his temples would swell up like thick thongs; and
when he started swearing into the bargain, every being trembled before
him, and the very dogs fled in terror to their kennels. His wife was a
meek, gentle, yielding creature. How could it be otherwise? Not
for twenty-four hours would he have endured at his side a more
sturdy-natured being, who might have attempted to preserve even the
shadow of an independent will. As it was, the two lived together fairly
well, happily one might almost have said, had it not been for his fatal
temper, which broke forth wildly at the slightest provocation and
caused the quiet woman many a tearful hour.

But she shed most tears when misfortune's hand fell heavily upon her
children. Three had been born to them--bonny, healthy, sturdy boys.
They had clear, blue eyes, flaxen hair and, above all, "a pair of
promising fists," as their father was wont to declare with pride,
though the youngest, who was still in his cradle, could as yet only
make use of his to suck at them. The two elder boys, however, were
already splendid fellows. How defiantly they looked about them, how
haughtily they took up their stand! With their heads thrown back and
their hands in their trousers pockets, each seemed to assert: "I am my
father's son. Who'll dare me?"

They fought each other all day long and it was their father himself who
always goaded them on. And if their mother in her terror intervened and
begged them to be at peace with one another, she got laughed at into
the bargain for her fears. The poor woman lived in constant anxiety
about her wild boys, for she saw to her terror that both had inherited
their father's violent temper. Once already she had only just arrived
in the nick of time, when Fritz, then eight years old, was about to
attack his brother, two years older than himself, with a large kitchen
knife; and a half a year later the day really dawned on which her dark
presentiments were realized.

The two boys had been fighting in the yard, and Martin, the elder one,
wild with rage because Fritz had beaten him, had hurled a stone at him
and hit him so unfortunately at the back of his head that he fell down
bleeding and immediately lost the power of speech. They could stanch
the blood, and the wound healed up, but his speech did not return.
Indifferent to all around, the boy sat there and let them feed him: he
had become an idiot.

It was a hard blow for the miller's family. The mother wept whole
nights through, and even he, the energetic hard-working man, went about
for a long time as if in a dream.

But the perpetrator of the disastrous deed was the one most impressed
by it. The defiant, boisterously happy boy was hardly recognizable. His
exuberance of spirits had disappeared; he spent his days in silent
brooding, obeyed his mother to the letter and, whenever possible,
avoided joining in the games of his school-fellows.

His love for his unfortunate brother was touching. When he was at home,
he never stirred from his side. With superhuman patience he accustomed
himself to the brutalized habits of the idiot, learned to understand
his inarticulate sounds, fulfilled his every wish, and looked on
smilingly when he destroyed his dearest toy.

The invalid boy got so used to his companionship that he would not be
without him. When Martin was at school, he cried incessantly and
preferred to go hungry rather than take food and drink from anyone
else.

For three years he dragged on this miserable existence; then he began
to ail and died.

Though his death certainly came as a relief to the whole household, all
mourned his loss sincerely, and Martin especially was inconsolable.
During the first months he wandered out daily to the cemetery and often
had to be torn by force away from the grave. Only very gradually he
grew calmer, chiefly through intercourse with the youngest boy,
Johannes, to whom he now appeared to transfer the intense love which he
had lavished upon his dead brother.

As long as the invalid lived, he had taken little notice of Johannes,
for he seemed to think it almost sinful to give even the merest
fraction of his affection to any one else. Now that death had robbed
him of the poor unfortunate, an invincible longing drew him towards his
younger brother--as if by his love for him he might fill the agonizing
void which the loss of his victim had left in him as if he might atone
toward the living for what he had inflicted on the dead.

Johannes was at that time a fine lad of five, already quite a little
man, who was to have his first pair of stout boots at next fair-time.
He seemed to have inherited nothing of his father's harsh, defiant
nature; he took much more after his gentle, quiet mother, to whom he
clung specially as her pet, and whose very idol he was. Not hers alone,
though, for all in the house spoiled and petted him, their sunbeam,
their source of joy.

Indeed, none who saw him could help loving him! His long, fair hair
gleamed like so many sunbeams, and in his eyes, which could twinkle so
merrily and at other times gaze so dreamily, there lay depths of
goodness and love. He attached himself fervently to his elder brother,
who had so long neglected him; but the disparity in their ages--they
were nearly nine years apart--did not allow of purely brotherly
relations between them.

Martin was already at the close of his boyhood; his serious, thoughtful
mien and measured, old-fashioned speech made him appear older than he
was. Besides, he was already destined to commence work in the following
year. Under these circumstances it was only natural that he should
assume a somewhat fatherly tone towards his younger brother, and though
he was not ashamed to join in his childish games and to be driven as
his patient horse with a "gee-up" and a "whoa," through the mill-yard
and across the fields, there was even in this more of the smiling
indulgence of a kindly tutor than of the spontaneous pleasure of an
older playmate.

The affectionate-natured boy, craving for love and sympathy, gave
himself up heart and soul to his big brother. He recognized his
boundless authority more even than that of his father and mother, who
were further removed from his childish sphere--and when school-days
commenced and Martin proved such a patient helper in word and deed
whenever lessons were hard, then the younger boy's veneration for his
elder brother knew no bounds. Old Rockhammer was the only one who was
not pleased with the closeness of their friendship. They were too
sweet; they "slobbered" each other too much, they had much better "live
like cats and dogs together" as a proof that they were really "one's
own flesh and blood." But their gentle mother was all the happier. Her
prayer to the Almighty by day and night was to protect her children and
nevermore to allow the flame of wrath to burst forth in Martin. And her
supplication seemed to have been heard. Only once more was her soul
filled with horror through an outburst of rage in her son.

Johannes--then nine years old--had been playing with a whip near some
carts standing in the yard ready to take away flour. Suddenly one of
the horses took fright; and the driver, a coarse, drunken fellow, tore
the whip out of the boy's hand, and gave him a cut with it across his
face and neck.

At the same instant Martin, lithe as a tiger, rushed out of the mill;
the veins on his temples swollen, his fists clenched, got hold of the
man and began to throttle him so that he was already black in the face.
Then his mother threw herself with a loud scream of terror between the
two. "Think of Fritz!" she cried, throwing up her arms in an agony of
horror; and the infuriated boy let his hands drop as if paralyzed,
tottered back and fell down sobbing on the threshold of the mill.

Since then his temper seemed to have died out entirely, and even when
he was once insulted and attacked on the highroad, he kept his knife,
which the people of those parts are quick to use, quietly in his
pocket.


The years sped on. Shortly after Martin came of age, the old miller
closed his eyes. His wife soon followed him. She did not recover after
his death, and quietly and without complaining, she withered away. It
was as if she could not exist without the scoldings which she had had
to take daily from her husband for twenty-three years.

The two brothers now dwelt alone in the orphaned mill. So it was no
wonder that they clung to each other even more closely, and that each
lived only for the other!

And yet they were very different outwardly and inwardly. Martin,
thick-set and short-necked, was awkward and silent in the presence of
strangers. His bushy, lowering eyebrows gave his face a dark look, and
his words came with difficulty and by fits and starts as if speaking
were in itself torture--in fact one might have taken him for a hard
misanthropist, if he had not had such an honest, hearty look in his
eyes, and such a good-natured, almost childlike smile that it sometimes
illumined his broad, coarsely-cut features like a ray of sunlight.

How utterly different was Johannes! His eyes beamed into the world so
frankly and cheerfully; the corners of his mouth seemed constantly
twitching with fun and merriment; and over his whole lithe, pliant
figure was cast the glamour of youth. The lassies all noticed it, and
sent many a glance after him, and many a blush, many a warm squeeze of
the hand told him plainly, "You could easily win my love." Johannes did
not care much about these matters. He was not yet "ripe for love," and
preferred a game of skittles to a dance, and would rather sit with his
silent brother beside the lock than walk with Rose or Gretel.

The two brothers had promised each other one still, solemn evening,
that they would never part and that no third person should ever come
between them in love or in hate.

But they had made their reckoning without taking into account the Royal
Recruiting Commission. The time came for Johannes to serve in the army.
He had to go far, far away, to Berlin, to the Uhlans of the Guard. It
was a hard trial for both of them. Martin kept his trouble to himself
as usual, but impetuous Johannes behaved as if he were absolutely
inconsolable, so that he was well teased at parting by his comrades.
His grief was, however, not of long duration. The fatigues of service
as a recruit, the novelty of it all, the lively bustle of the
metropolis, left him little time for dreaming and only now and then, as
he lay in the calm dawn on his camp bed, a great longing came over him;
the homely mill gleamed through the darkness like a lost Paradise and
the clatter of the wheels sounded in his ears like heavenly music. But
as soon as he heard the trumpet call, the vision passed away.

Martin fared worse at the mill, where he was now quite alone, for he
could not reckon as companions the millhands, or old David, an
inheritance from his father. Friends he had never had either in the
village or elsewhere. Johannes sufficed him and took their place
entirely. He slunk about brooding in silence, his mind ever gloomier,
his thoughts ever darkened, and at last melancholy took such hold of
him that the vision of his victim began to haunt him. He was sensible
enough to know that he could not go on living like this, and forcibly
sought to distract his thoughts--went on Sundays to the village dance
and visited the neighboring hamlets under pretense of trade interests.
But as for the result of all this--well, one fine day at the
commencement of his second year of service, Johannes got a letter from
his brother. It ran as follows:


"My Dear Boy:

"I shall have to write it some time, even though you will be angry with
me. I could not bear my loneliness any longer and have made up my mind
to enter into the matrimonial state. Her name is Gertrude Berling, and
she is the daughter of a wind-miller in Lehnort, two miles from here.
She is very young and I love her very much. The wedding is to be in six
weeks. If you can, get leave of absence for it.

"Dear brother, I beg of you, do not be vexed with me. You know
you will always have a home at the mill whether there is a mistress
there or not. Our fatherly inheritance belongs to us both, in any
case. She sends you her kind regards. You once met each other at a
shooting-match, and she liked you very much, but you took no notice of
her, and she sends you word she was immensely offended with you.

           "Farewell,

                 "Your faithful brother,

                                    "Martin."


Johannes was a very spoiled creature. Martin's engagement appeared to
him as high treason against their brotherly love. He felt as if his
brother had deceived him and meanly deprived him of his due rights.
Henceforth a stranger was to rule where hitherto he alone had been
king, and his position at the mill was to depend on her favor and good
will. Even the friendly message from the wind-miller's daughter did not
calm or appease him. When the day of the wedding came, he took no
leave, but only sent his love and good wishes by his old schoolfellow
Franz Maas, who was just left off from military service.

Six months later he himself was at liberty.

How now, Johannes? We are so obstinate that on no account will we go
home, and prefer to seek our fortune in foreign parts; we roam about,
now to right, now to left, up hill and down hill and rub off our horns,
and when, four weeks later, we come to the conclusion that in spite of
the wind-miller's daughter there is no place in the world like the
Rockhammer mill, we went our way homewards most cheerfully.

One sunny day in May Johannes arrived in Marienfeld.

Franz Mass, who had set up the autumn before as a worthy baker, was
standing, with his legs apart, in front of his shop, looking up
contentedly at the tin "Bretzel" swinging over his door in the gentle
noon-day breeze, when he saw an Uhlan come swaggering down the village
street with his cap cocked to one side and clinking his spurs. His
brave ex-soldier's heart beat quicker under his white baker's apron as
he took his pipe out of his mouth and shaded his eyes with his hand.

"Well, I declare, it's Johannes!"

"Hallo, old fellow!" And they were greeting each other with effusion.

"Where do you hail from so late in the season? Have you had to do extra
service?"

"For shame!"

Then they start questions and confessions. About the captain and the
sergeant and old Knapphaus and the fair baker's daughter whom they used
to call "Crumpet Mary," and who lived in the baker's shop close to the
barracks--they all have their turn and not one is forgotten.

"And what about yourself? Did they recognize you in the village?" asks
Franz, transferring his insatiable thirst for knowledge to more homely
ground.

"Not a soul," laughs Johannes, complacently twirling his budding
cavalry moustache which points heavenwards in two smart ends.

"And at home?"

Johannes makes a serious face and says he must go.

"Oh, you're only on the way there now? Then I suppose it's bobbing
about in there?" And he gives him a searching thump on his chest.

Johannes laughs curtly and then suppresses a sigh as if to master his
excitement.

Franz lays his hand on his shoulder and says: "Well, you will find a
sister-in-law--upon my word, she's a sister-in-law worth having!" He
smacks his lips and winks his eye. It fills Johannes again with his
former defiance and rage. He shrugs his shoulders contemptuously,
shakes hands with his friend and goes off clinking his spurs.

Three more minutes' walk; then he is through the village. There is the
church! Poor old thing--it has got even a bit more tumble-down!

But the black larches still rustle as of old, and theirs is the same
sweet song of happy promise which they sang to him on the day of his
confirmation. There on the left is the inn--by Jove, they have put
up a massive new doorway, and at the window there stand immense
liquor-flasks, filled with flaming red and viciously green fluids. Mine
host of the "Crown" has been looking up! That side-path leads down to
the river. And there is the mill, the goal of his dreams! How
comfortable the old thatched roof looks across the alder bushes, how
snowy white are the cherry blossoms in the garden, how cheerily the
mill-wheels clatter: "Welcome, welcome!"

How the dear old moss-grown weir seems to chant a blessing from afar!
He pushes his cap a degree further back and pulls himself together
resolutely, for he is determined to master his emotion.

All the fields stretching on either side of the road belong to the
mill. On the right is winter-rye, as of old; but on the left, where
there used to be a potato-patch, there is now a kitchen garden--there
are asparagus-plants and young beetroots arranged in prim and orderly
rows.

Between the long vegetable borders, about five paces from the fence, he
sees the lithe, robust figure of a girl assiduously bending to her
work.

Who can that be? Does she belong to the mill? Perhaps a new maid!
Hardly that, though, for she looks too smart, too neat; her shoes are
too light, her apron too dainty, the white kerchief so picturesquely
draped round her head is of too fine a texture. If only she would not
so completely shade her face! Now she looks up! Good heavens, what a
sweet girl! How her bonny cheeks glow, how her dark eyes gleam, how her
pouting lips seem to invite a kiss!

As she perceives him, she drops her hoe and stares at him.

"Good-day," he says, and touches his cap somewhat awkwardly. "Do you
know whether the miller is at home?"

"Yes, he's at home," she says, and goes on staring at him.

"I wonder what she means by it," he thinks, fighting against his
embarrassment; and as, since his Berlin days, he has every reason to
consider himself well-nigh irresistible, it is a point of honor with
him now to step close up to the hedge and attempt a little flirtation
with the girl.

"Well, always busy?" he asks, just for the sake of asking, and in his
confusion clutches at the ends of his moustache. Uhlan, beware! Take
care!!

"Yes, I'm always busy," she repeats mechanically, while she stares at
his face unceasingly; and suddenly, raising her hand and spreading out
all five fingers as if she would like to point at him with them all,
she says, as she bursts out laughing:

"Why, you're Johannes!"

"Yes, tha-at's m-e," he stammers in astonishment; "and who are you?"

"I'm his wife!"

"What? You--his--Martin's?"

"Hm!" And she nods at him with assumed dignity, while her eyes are full
of roguishness.

"But you look like a young girl!"

"It isn't so very long since I was one," she laughs.

They stand on opposite sides of the fence and look at each other.

Collecting herself, she wipes her hands ostentatiously on her apron,
and stretches them out to him through the lattice-work.

"Welcome, brother-in-law!"

He returns her hand-shake, but is silent.

"Do you perhaps intend to be angry with me, brother-in-law?" she says,
and looks up at him roguishly. He feels absolutely powerless before
her, and can only laugh awkwardly and say: "I--angry? Oh, dear no!"

"It looked rather like it!" she says, and lifting her finger
threateningly, she adds: "Oh, I should only just have liked you to
attempt such a thing!" Thereupon she sticks her chin into her collar
and bursts into a soft chuckle.

"Well, you are funny! he says, with a rather more easy laugh.

"I funny?--never! You go along now; meanwhile I will run in through the
garden and fetch Martin."

And she starts to run away, then stops suddenly, puts her finger to her
nose and says: "Wait a minute; I will come across to you."

Before he has time to stretch out a helping hand, she had slipped, as
nimble as a lizard, in between the boards of the fencing.

"Well, here I am," she says, smoothing out her dress, while she lets
the knotted kerchief fall loosely onto her neck, so that a mass of
little brown curls escape round her forehead and neck and begin to
dance in the wind as if delighted at their newly regained freedom.

His gaze rests with astonishment on the fresh, girlish beauty of this
young wife, who behaves like a wild unconstrained child.

She notices the look, and slightly blushing, she passes her hand over
the curly disorder which will not be fettered.

For a while they walk beside each other in silence.

She looks down and smiles as if she too had suddenly learned shyness.
Conversation flags till they have got through the large entrance-gate.
Johannes looks about and gives a cry of amazement. He cannot believe
his eyes.

Everything all around is changed, everything is beautified. The round
court-yard, which in rainy weather used to be one immense pool of dirt
and in dry weather one mass of dust-clouds, now is all covered with
turf like some flowering meadow, the doors of the store-houses and
stables are resplendent with bright red paint and bear white numbers.
In the middle of the open space is an artistic pigeon-house, like a
little Swiss chalet, and in front of the house is a newly built
veranda, round whose shining windowpanes and dainty wood-carving some
young creepers twine their budding tendrils. The mill lies before his
ecstatic gaze like the very home of peace and innocence. He folds his
hands in emotion and asks "Who has done all this?"

She looks about without speaking.

"You?" he asks, amazed.

"I helped," she answers modestly.

"But you originated it?"

She smiles. This smile makes her appear older, and for a moment her
child-like face is suffused with a shimmer of womanly grace.

"Your hand is blessed," he says softly and shyly, more in earnest than
is his wont.

He cannot help thinking of his dead mother, who so often complained of
the dreadful dust, and that in the whole space outside there was not a
single place where she could sit down in comfort.

"If only she could have lived to see this," he murmurs to himself.

"Mother?" she asks him.

He looks up astonished. That she should not say "your mother" startles
him at first, then it gives him a feeling of intense pleasure such as
he has never before in his life felt. A sort of happy glow enters into
his heart and will not leave it. So there is now in the world a young,
beautiful strange woman who speaks of his mother as if she had been
hers too, as if she herself were his sister, the sister he had so often
longed for in his foolish younger days, when his gaze used to rest with
admiration on other girls.

And now she softly repeats her question.

"Yes, mother," he answers, and looks at her gratefully.

She bears his look for a second; then drops her eyes and says in some
confusion; "I wonder where Martin can be?"

"In the mill, I suppose!"

"Yes, in the mill, of course," she answers quickly; and with the words
"I will fetch him," she hurries away. Almost without thinking he stares
after the girlish figure bounding so lightly across the grass.

Everything about her seems to be flying and fluttering--her skirts, her
apron-strings, the kerchief about her neck, her untameable, entangled
mass of curls.

He remains for a time gazing after her as if spell-bound; then he
laughingly shakes his head and walks to the veranda. There he notices a
dainty work-table and on it a round wicker-work-basket. Across its edge
hangs a piece of work commenced, a long, white strip embroidered with
flowers and leaves such as women use for insertion. Without thinking he
takes the piece of cambric in his hand and examines the cunning
stitches till his sister-in-law's laughing voice reaches his ears.

Like a surprised criminal he quickly lets the embroidery drop--there
she is already, bending round the corner; and the flour-whitened,
square-set figure she is so merrily dragging behind her and who is so
awkwardly trying to divest himself of her little, clutching hands, and
dispersing thick, white dust-clouds all round, that is, why, that is--

"Martin, dear old Martin!" and he rushes out to embrace him.

The awkward movements cease; the bushy eye-brows are drawn up--the
good-natured, quiet smile grows stony--the whole figure is fixed--the
man draws back--but next moment he rushes forward towards his
newly-regained darling.

In silence the brothers clasp each other.

Then after a time Martin takes the head of the returned wanderer
between his two hands and, knitting his brows darkly and gnawing at his
under-lip he looks long and earnestly into his brother's beaming,
laughing eyes. Thereupon he sits down on the seat in the veranda, rests
his elbows on his knees and looks down.

"Why are you so pensive, Martin?" Johannes asks softly, laying his hand
on his brother's shoulder.

"Well, why shouldn't I be pensive?" he answers, with a peculiar sort of
low grunt which accompanies all his meager speeches. "Ah--you rascal!"
he continues, and the good-natured grin which is his in happy moments
spreads over his heavily-cut features. "You made up your mind to be
angry--you, you?" Then he jumps up and takes his wife's hand. "Look at
him, Trude; he wanted to be angry, the silly fellow! Come here, boy!
Eh--here she is--look at her properly, well! Do you think you could be
angry with _her_?"

Then he drops clumsily onto his seat, so that a fresh cloud of white
dust flies up, looks at Johannes, laughs to himself a little and says
at last: "Trude, fetch a clothes brush!" Trude bursts out laughing and
skips away singing. When she returns waving the desired object high in
the air, he gives the order: "Now brush him!"

"When a miller or a sweep grows affectionate, there's sure to be a
misfortune," Johannes says, attempting a joke, and tries to take the
brush out of her hand.

"Please allow me, Mr. Johannes," she protests, hiding the brush under
her apron.

Martin hits the bench with his fist. "Mr. Johannes! Well, I
never--what's the meaning of that? Haven't you made friends yet?--eh?"

Johannes is silent and Trude brushes away at him with great vigor.

"Then I suppose you haven't even given each other a kiss yet?"

Trude lets the brush fall suddenly. Johannes says "H'm" and busies
himself with rolling the wheel of one of his spurs along the scraper
standing at the entrance.

"It's the proper thing to do, however! Now then!"

Johannes faces about and twirls his moustache, determined to get over
his awkward predicament by playing the man of the world; but with all
that he has not the courage to bend down to her. He stands there as
stiff as a post and waits till she holds up her little mouth; then for
a moment he presses his trembling lips upon hers, and feels how a
slight shudder runs through her frame.

A moment later it is all over. With a shy smile they stand next to one
another--both blushing all over.--Martin slaps his knees with his hands
and declares it has been as good as a side-splitting farce. Then he
suddenly gets up and walks off. He must ponder over his happiness in
solitude.


In the afternoon the brothers go together into the mill. Trude stands
at the window and looks after them, and, when Johannes turns around,
she smiles and hides behind the curtain. On the threshold Johannes
stands still and leans his head against the door-post, and deep emotion
fills him as he gazes into the semi-darkness of the dear old place from
which proceeds such a din of wheels that it nearly stuns him, while the
draught drives into his face great whitish-grey clouds of flour,
bran-dust and steam. Side by side the various "runs" open out before
him. On the left, nearest the wall, the old "bolting-run," for the
finest flour; then the "bruising-run," where the bran and flour remain
together; then the "groats-run," where the barley is freed from its
husks; and finally the "cylinder-run," one of the new kind only
recently added.--They have also had a new spiral alley and a lift made.
Fashion now-a-days requires all these innovations.

Martin puts his hands in his pockets and saunters along with his pipe
in his mouth in silent self-content. Then he takes hold of Johannes'
hand and proceeds to explain the new invention--how the fine flour is
caught up by the spiral and conveyed to the suspiral where small pails,
running along a belting, raise it through two stories, almost to the
roofing, and then empty it into the silken, cylinder-like funnels
through the fine network of which it has to pass before becoming fit
for use. Listening breathlessly, Johannes drinks in his brother's
scant, slowly uttered words, and is surprised how ignorant one grows in
the army; for all these things are sealed books to him.

Business is flourishing. All the works are in full swing, and the
'prentices have plenty to do with pouring the grain into the
mill-hopper and watching the outflow of the flour and the bran.

"I have three now," says Martin, pointing to the white-powdered
fellows, one of whom is continually running up and down the stairs.

"And is David here yet?" asks Johannes.

"Why, of course," answers Martin; and makes a face as if the mere idea
of David's being no longer at the mill had scared him.

"Where has he hidden himself, the old fellow?" Johannes laughingly
asks.

"David! David!" shouts Martin's lusty voice above all the clatter of
the wheels.

Then from out the darkness, by the motor machine, which rises
Cyclops-like from below the woodwork of the galleries, there emerges a
long, lanky figure, dipped in flour--a face shows itself on which the
indifference of old age has left nothing to be read--a slightly
reddened nose, which almost meets the bristly chin, weak and sulky eyes
hidden beneath bushy brows, and a mouth which seems to be continually
chewing.

"What do you want me for, master?" he asks, planting himself in front
of the brothers without removing the clay pipe which hangs loosely
between his lips.

"Here's Johannes," says Martin, patting the old man's shoulder, while a
good-natured smile crosses his countenance.

"Don't you know me any more, David?" asks Johannes, holding out his
hand in a friendly manner. The old man spits out a stream of brown
juice from between his teeth, considers awhile and then mumbles:

"Why shouldn't I know you?"

"And how are you?"

"How should I be?"--Then he begins fumbling about at a sack of flour,
tying and untying the string with his bony fingers; then when he has
made sure that he is no longer wanted, he withdraws once more into his
dark corner.

Martin's face beams. "There's a faithful soul for you, Johannes--28
years of service, eh! And always industrious and conscientious."

"By the bye, what does he do?"

Martin looks confused. "Well--look here--eh--hard to say--position of
trust--eh--faithful soul, faithful soul."

"Does the faithful soul still occasionally prig something from the
flour-sacks?" asks Johannes laughing.

Martin shrugs his shoulders impatiently and mutters something about "28
years of service," and closing an eye.

"He seems still to owe me a grudge," says Johannes, "for having
discovered the hiding place to which he had carried his hardly-stolen
little hoard."

"You will persist in being prejudiced against him," answers Martin,
"just like Trude too--you are unjust towards him,--most unjust."

Johannes laughingly shakes his head; then he points to a door leading
to a newly erected partition.

"What's that?"

Martin moves about uneasily. "My office," he then stammers, and, as
Johannes attempts to open the door, he runs up to him and catches him
back by his coat-tails.

"I beg of you," he mutters, "do not cross that threshold. Not
to-day--nor any other day.--I have my reasons." Johannes looks at him
in vexation. "Since when have you secrets from me," he feels impelled
to ask, but his brother's trustful, pleading look closes his lips, and
arm in arm they leave the mill together.

Evening has come.--The great wheel is at rest, and with it the host of
smaller ones.--Silence is over all the mill and only in the distance
the rushing water of the weir sings its monotonous song. Here of
course--in front of the house--the mill-brook is quiet and peaceful, as
though it had nothing in the world to do but to carry water-lilies and
to mirror the setting sun in its depths. Like a golden-red, dark-edged
streamer it winds along between the straggling thicket of alders, in
which a choir of nightingales are just clearing their throats and, all
unconscious of their superior merit, are about to commence a singing
competition with the frogs down there. The three human beings who are
henceforth to pass their days together in this blossoming, song-laden
solitude have already become lovingly intimate. They sit on the veranda
around the white-spread supper-table, the food upon which has to-day
found little appreciation, and their gaze is full of intense content.
Martin rests his head on his hands and draws great clouds of smoke from
his short pipe, from time to time emitting a sound which is something
of a laugh, something of a growl.

Johannes has quite buried himself in the mass of foliage and lets the
tendrils of the wild vine play about his face. They tremble and flutter
with his every breath.

Trude has pushed her head deep into her collar and is looking furtively
across at the two brothers, like a high-spirited child that would like
to get into mischief but first wants to make quite sure that no one is
watching. This silence is evidently not to her taste, but she is
already too well schooled to break it. Meantime she amuses herself by
making little pellets of bread and shooting them, unnoticed by either
of the brothers, into the midst of the herd of sparrows hopping about
the veranda, with greedy intent. There is one in particular, a little,
dirty fellow, who beats all the others' cunning and alertness. As soon
as a grain of food comes rolling along he spreads both wings, screams
like mad, and while fighting he endeavors to get it away by beating his
wings, so that he can take possession of it comfortably while the
others are still wildly hacking at each other. This maneuver he repeats
four or five times, and always successfully, till one of his comrades
finds out his trick and does it still better.

This gives Trude a fit of laughing which she tries to suppress by
stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth and holding her breath till
she gets quite blue in the face--Then when she finds it absolutely
impossible to contain herself any longer, she jumps up to get away, but
before she reaches the door, her laughter bursts forth and she
disappears into the darkness of the passage, screaming loudly with
delight.

Both brothers are roused from their dreaming.

"What's up?" asks Johannes, startled. Martin shakes his head as he
looks after his young, foolish wife whose tricks he well knows; then
after a time he takes his brother's hand and says, pointing to the
door:

"Well--does she look as if she would oust you?"

"No, indeed," answers Johannes with a somewhat uneasy laugh.

"Oh, my boy," growls Martin, scratching his bushy head, "what a lot of
worry I have been through!--I tossed about in my bed a long night when
I thought of you! I mean on account of the wrong I might be doing
you."--Then after a time--"And yet when I look at her--she is so
fair--so innocent--say yourself, my boy, could I possibly help loving
her? When I saw her--ah--why it was all over with me.--In so many ways
she reminded me of you--merry, and bright-eyed and full of mischief,
just like you.--Of course she was a child and has remained one to the
present day--Charmless and wild and playful as a child.--And I tell
you--she wants holding in tighter--her spirits run away with her.--But
that is just how I love her to be"--a tender look brightens his
features--"and if I rightly think it over, I would not even miss one of
her ridiculous doings. You know I always must have some one to watch
over--formerly I had you, now she is the one."

After relieving his feelings in this manner, he once more becomes
silent.

"And are you happy?" asks Johannes.

Martin hides himself in a thick cloud of smoke, and from out of that he
mutters after a time:

"Well, that depends!"

"On what?"

"On your not being angry with her."

"I angry with her?"

"Well, well, you needn't make excuses!"

Johannes does not reply. He will soon convince his brother of better
things--and closing his eyes, he buries his head once more in the
waving foliage. A gleam of light causes him to look up. Trude is
standing on the threshold, holding a lamp and looking ashamed of
herself. Her charming, childlike face is bathed in a red glow and the
drooping lashes cast long, semi-circling shadows on her full cheeks.

"What a ridiculous creature you are!" says Martin, stroking her ruffled
hair tenderly.

"Won't you go to rest, Johannes?" she asks with great seriousness,
though there is still the sound of suppressed laughter in her voice.

"Good-night, brother!"

"Wait, I am coming too!"

Johannes shakes hands with his sister-in-law, while she turns her face
aside with a furtive smile.

Martin takes the lamp from her and precedes his brother up the stairs.
At the top he takes his hand and gazes silently and deeply into his
eyes, like one who cannot yet contain his happiness; then he softly
closes the door.

Johannes sighs and stretches himself, pressing both hands to his
breast. His heart is heavy for very joy. He feels as if he must go
after his brother and relieve his feelings by a few loving, grateful
words, but already he hears his steps downstairs in the entrance. It is
too late. But his mind must be calmer before he can attempt to sleep.

He puts out the lamp and pushes open a window. The night air cools his
brow.--How soothing it is--how it wafts peace!

He bends over the window-ledge, whistles a song to himself and looks
out into the night. The apple-tree beneath him is in full bloom--a
waving sea of blossoms. How often as a child he has climbed up there,
how often, tired with play, he has leant, dreaming, against its trunk,
while its rustling leaves told him fairy stories. And when in autumn a
gust of wind swept through the branches, it brought down a shower of
rosy-cheeked apples, which fell almost into his lap.--What ecstasy that
was! How many things enter one's thoughts as one whistles! Each note
awakens a new song, each melody conjures up new reminiscences. And with
the old songs there returns the old longing and flies on butterfly's
wings through a vast empire between the moon and the morning sun!--

And as he looks down upon the earth melting into darkness, he sees how
a window is softly opened and an upturned face bends far out. From out
of a pale, gleaming oval, framed in a background of shadowy hair, two
dark eyes glanced up at him, slyly and mischievously.

Abruptly he stops whistling; then a teasing laugh greets his ears, and
his sister-in-law's merry voice cries: "Go on, Johannes!"

And when he will not do her bidding, she points her own lips and
attempts a few very imperfect notes.

Then Martin's deep bass voice becomes audible in the house, saying in a
tone of paternal reproof:

"None of your nonsense, Trude! Let him sleep!"

"But he doesn't sleep," she answers, pouting like a scolded child. Then
the window is shut. The voices die away.

Johannes laughingly shakes his head and goes to bed, but he cannot
sleep. Those flowers prevent him which Trude has placed at his
bed-side, and the leaves of which hang right over the edge of the bed.
Pale bluish bunches of lilac and the nebulous white stars of narcissi
are mingled together. He turns round, kneels up in bed and buries his
face in the flowery depths. Fondly the leaflets kiss his eye-lids and
his lips.

Suddenly he listens. From underneath the floor, as it were from the
bowels of the earth, comes a quiet laugh. It is soft as a breath of
wind passing over the grass, but so merry, so full of happiness.

He listens, hoping to hear it again, but all is still. "Crazy little
body, you," he says amused, then falls back upon his pillow and drops
to sleep smiling.

Next day Johannes fetches down his working-clothes. They are a bit
tight across the shoulders. But then, one gets broader.

The sun is already high in the heavens. As if it could shine so
brightly, right into one's heart, anywhere else!--The sun of home is a
wonderful thing. What it looks upon, it gilds, and when it touches
one's lips, they begin to sing.

"It is lovely at home--hurrah!"

"Now I have a nest of merry birds in the house," laughs Martin, coming
to greet him. "Go on singing. I am used to that from Trude--but what
are you doing in that white coat?"

"I suppose you think I am going to be idle here?"

"At least just for a day!"

"Not for an hour! My lazy times are over!"

Martin has meanwhile noticed the flowers at the bed-side and says with
a grumbling laugh: "Now there's a little witch for you! I have
forbidden it for myself, and now she begins the same nonsense with
others. That's why you look so pale this morning.

"I, pale? Not in the least!"

"Don't say a word! I'll cure her of her tricks."

With that they go downstairs.

Trude is nowhere to be seen.

"She has been in the garden since five o'clock," says Martin with a
pleased smile. "Everything goes like clock-work since she's at the head
of affairs. As quick as a weasel, up at peep of day and always merry,
always ready with a song and a laugh."

On their way to the mill a young turnip whizzes past the brothers',
heads. Martin turns round and laughingly threatens with his finger.

"Who was that?" asks Johannes, peering in bewilderment round the empty
yard.

"Who but she?"

"But can you see her anywhere?"

"Not a trace of her! Oh, she's a teasing elf who can become invisible
at will." And with a beaming face he follows his brother to the mill.

The hours pass by. Johannes wants to show what he can do and works with
twofold energy.

While he is superintending the storing of the grain on the gallery,
some one from below gently pulls his coat-tail. He looks down;--Trude,
with sun-heated face and sparkling eyes, stands on the steps and
invites him to come to breakfast. "In a minute," he says, finishes his
task and jumps down.

"Brr!" she says, shaking herself, "how you look!

"What's the matter?

"Well--yesterday I liked you better." Then she gives him her hand with a
"good-morning," and trips down the stairs in front of him, strewing the
flour about for fun as she goes.

When they get to the door of the partition that Martin called his
office, she pulls a mysterious face and raises her hand silently as if
to lay a ghost.

Then after a moment she asks: "I say, what has he got in there!"

"I don't know."

"Mayn't you go in either?"

"No."

"Thank goodness! Then I am not the only one who's kept in the dark. In
there he sits, and every stranger is allowed to go in to him, only not
I. If I want him, I have to ring.--Say yourself whether that's nice of
him? Surely I am no longer such a child that he should--well, I won't
say anything,--one oughtn't to speak ill of one's husband--but you are
his own brother--do put in a good word for me, so that he tells me what
is in there. For I am dying to know."

"Do you suppose he has told me?"

"Well, then we must comfort each other. Come along."--And in one jump
she flies up the three steps leading to the entrance.

During breakfast she suddenly puts on a serious air and speaks grandly
of her weighty household cares. Of course, she says, she had to be
independent at home already, for her poor little mother died many years
past, and she had to superintend her father's household long before she
was confirmed; but it was only a small one, for her father had to
manage with one apprentice and almost worked himself to death--poor
father!

Her eyes are full of tears. She is ashamed and turns away. Then she
jumps up and asks: "Have you had enough?" And when he says "Yes," she
continues: "Come along into the garden. There's an arbor which is
splendid for a chat."

"That one at the end of the long path?--that is my favorite place too."

Side by side they stroll through the mazy garden walks, all bathed in
glowing sunlight, and both feel relieved when they reach the cool shade
of the leafy recess.

She throws herself down carelessly on the grassy bank and puts her
plump, sun-burnt arms under her head. Through the dense foliage stray
gleams of sunlight break, painting her dress with golden patches,
playing on her neck and face, and passing over her head till they make
her curly brown hair all aglow.

Johannes sits down opposite her and gazes at her with undisguised
admiration. He is convinced that never before in his life has he seen
so much loveliness as there in the half-reclining figure of his
charming young sister-in-law, and he thinks of his brother's saying:
"Was it possible for me not to love her?"

"I don't know why I feel so inclined to talk about myself to-day," she
says with her sympathetic smile, while she shifts her head to a more
comfortable position. "Do you care to listen?" He nods his head.

"I am glad of that, Johannes! Well, you may imagine that at home bread
was not over plentiful--not to speak of the butter which by rights
belongs to it--and if I had not had my little garden, the produce of
which we could sell in the town, we should not have managed at all.
'Why does everyone take all their grain to the Rockhammer mill, without
thinking that the poor wind-miller wants to live too?' That is what we
often thought, and we positively hated your place. Then all of a sudden
comes Martin--says he wants to be neighborly--and is kind and good to
father and kind and good to me--and brings toffee and sugar-candy for
the boys, so that we are all mad on him. And in the end he informs
father that he absolutely must have me for his wife. 'But she hasn't a
penny,' says my father, and fancy--he took me without a farthing!
You may imagine how glad I was, for father had often said to me:
'Now-a-days men only marry for money; you are a poor girl, Trude, so
make up your mind to be an old maid. And now I was engaged before my
17th birthday.--And then, you know, I had liked Martin very much for a
long time already--for even if he is rather shy and quiet I could see
by his eyes what a kind heart he has! Only he can't let himself go, as
he would perhaps like to. I know how good he is, and even if he growls
ever so much and scolds me, I shall be fond of him all my life!" She is
silent for a moment and passes her hand across her face as if to wipe
away the sunbeam which is gilding her lashes and making her eyes
glisten. "And fancy how good he is to my family," she then resumes
eagerly, as if she could not find enough love to heap on Martin's head.
"He absolutely wanted to give them a yearly allowance--I don't know how
much--but I would not allow that--for I did not wish to induce my
father in his old days to take alms, even though it was from his
son-in-law. But one thing I asked for--for permission to continue
the gardening as I had done at home and to use the proceeds as
pocket-money. What I do with it is my own business." She smiles across
at him slyly and then continues: "They really do want it though, at
home, for you see, there are three boys who all want to be fed and
clothed, and they have to keep a servant too now, since I left home."

"Have you no sisters?" he asks.

She shakes her head; then she says, suddenly bursting out laughing.
"It's really too bad. Not even one for a wife for you."

He joins in her laughter and observes: "I don't seem to want a wife so
much now."

"As what?"

"As a sister."

"Well, she is here," says she, jumping up and stepping up to him; then,
as if ashamed of her impetuosity, she drops down again on to the grass,
blushing.

"Yes, will you be that?" he says with beaming eyes.

She pulls a little face and observes carelessly. "That's nothing much
to be! Sister-in-law is in itself already as much as half a sister."
Then, smilingly looking him up and down, she remarks: "I think one
might put up with you as a brother."

"Five foot ten--been Uhlan of the Guard--does that suffice?"

"And you might even turn out a good playfellow."

"Do you require one?"

"Yes, very badly! It is so quiet and solemn here. There's not a soul to
romp about with as I used to with my brothers at home. Sometimes I felt
half inclined to collar one of the mill-hands, but dignity and respect
forbade such a thing."

"Well, I am here now," he laughs.

And she: "I set great hopes on you!"--

"Then collar me!"

"You are too floury for me."

"A fine miller's wife to be afraid of flour," he teases.

"Never mind," she interrupts, "I shall soon put your playing powers to
the test."

In the gloaming, when they are once more sitting together on the
veranda, and Johannes, like his brother, sits dreaming with his head
hidden in the foliage, he suddenly feels a round, indefinable something
hit his head and then drop to the ground. "Perhaps it was a cock-chafer,"
he thinks to himself, but the attack is renewed two or three times.

Then he begins to suspect Trude, who sits like a perfect picture of
innocence, humming quite dolefully to herself, "In Yonder Verdant
Valley," while she works little bread pellets which evidently serve as
her missiles.

He suppresses a merry laugh, secretly gets hold of a branch of the vine
on which a few of last year's dried-up berries are still hanging, and
when she lets fly a new volley at him, he promptly dispatches his reply
at her little nose.

She flinches, looks at him quite amazed for a moment, and when he bends
towards her with the most serious face in the world, she bursts into a
loud, joyful laugh.

"What's the matter again now?" asks Martin, startled from his dreaming.

"He has withstood the test," she laughs, putting her arm around her
husband's neck.

"What test?"

"If I tell you, you will grumble, so I had better be silent."

Martin looks at Johannes questioningly.

"Oh, it's nothing," says he smiling; "it was only nonsense. We
were--bombarding each other."

"That's right, children--you bombard one another," Martin says, and
goes on smoking in silence. Johannes is ashamed of himself, while Trude
challenges her playfellow with mischievous glances. "Full of play,"
yes, that was it; that was what Martin Rockhammer had called his wife.

Henceforth there are to be no more of those peaceful silent hours in
the gloaming which Martin loves so well.

The quiet paths of the garden resound with song and laughter, across
the lawn figures dart, as quick as the wind, in pursuit of each
other;--they let loose the dogs and race with them;--they hunt the wild
cats that frequent the mill-yard--they play hide-and-seek behind the
haystacks and hedges.

Martin looks on at all these doings with kindly, fatherly indulgence.

At the bottom of his heart he would prefer to have his former quiet
restored, but they are both so happy in their youth and harmlessness;
their eyes sparkle so, their cheeks are so rosy: it would be a shame to
spoil their pleasure through grumbling and interference. Why, they are
but children! And are there not quieter hours? When Trude says, "Hans,
let us sing," they sit down demurely side by side on the veranda or
saunter slowly along the river, and when Martin has lighted his pipe
and is ready to listen, they warble forth their songs into the
gloaming. These are delightful, solemn moments. The birds in the trees
twitter in their slumber, a soft breeze wafts through the branches and
the mill-weir with its dull rushing sings the accompaniment. How
quickly their mood changes! They have begun so merrily, but the
melodies grow sadder and sadder, and the sound of their voices more and
more mournful. A few minutes ago they were planning nonsense, now they
have solemnly folded their hands and are gazing dreamily towards the
sunset. Johannes' clear tenor tones well with her full deep contralto,
and his ear never fails him when he is singing seconds in some new
song.

It is strange that they cannot sing when they are alone together. If
Martin happens to be called away on business during their song, their
voices at once begin to waver, they look at each other and smile, turn
away and smile again; then generally one of them makes a mistake and
they stop singing. If Martin is not at home in the evening, or if, as
is his wont once or twice a week, he has locked himself up in his
"office," they are both silent as if by a mutual understanding, and
neither of them would dare to invite the other to sing. Instead of
singing they have other more fascinating occupations which are only
possible when they are sure no third person is listening. While serving
in the army Johannes had acquired an "Album of Lyrics," in which he had
made a collection of everything in the way of merry or sentimental
songs that took his fancy. The sentimental kind, however, greatly
predominate. Love ditties, dirges, ballads about child murderers or
innocently convicted criminals, side by side with poetical meditations
on the vanity of life in general--and the gem of the whole collection
is Kotzebue's "Outburst of Despair," that sentimental effusion which
was for half a century the most popular of all German poems. This
collection just suits Trude's taste in poetry, and as soon as she is
alone with Johannes she whispers entreatingly, "Fetch the Lyrics!" Then
they crouch in some quiet corner, put their heads together--for Trude
insists on looking into the book too--and enjoy the delicious feeling
of awe which thrills them as they read.

There is that wonderful "Count Von Sackingen to his Bride:--"


      "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 débris 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."

He makes a melancholy face and says: "If only it were possible!"

She bursts out laughing and he laughs with her; it is "possible," of
course, but the love of concealment to which they have pandered will
not be shaken off. Every foolish joke gains piquancy by the fact that
Martin "on no account" must get to know about it, and when they are
whispering with their heads together, they start asunder at the least
noise as if they were planning conspiracy.

As yet no word has been spoken, no look exchanged, hardly a thought
awakened which need shun the light, but the bloom of innocence has been
swept off their souls. In this wise the feast of St. John has come
round.

The wind blows sultry. The earth lies as if intoxicated--buried beneath
blossoms, reveling in a superabundance of fragrance. The jasmine and
guelder-rose bushes appear as though covered with white foam; the
spring roses open their chalices, and the limes are putting forth their
buds already.

Trude sits on the veranda, has let her work drop into her lap and is
a-dreaming. The fragrance of the flowers and the sun's hot glow have
confused her senses, but she heeds not that. The flowers' fragrance and
the sun's hot breath, she would love to drain all the flower-cups--if
only they contained something to drink.

In the mill they have ceased working earlier than usual, for the
apprentices want to go to the village to the midsummer night's fête.
There is to be dancing and firing of tar-barrels and everyone will
enjoy himself to the best of his ability.

Trude sighs. Ah, for a chance of going there too! Martin may stay at
home, but Johannes, Johannes of course would have to accompany her
there. There he stands at the entrance and nods across at her. Then he
throws himself down on the bench opposite--he is tired and hot. He has
been working hard.

A few minutes later he jumps up again. "I can't stay here," he says.
"It is suffocatingly hot."

"Where else do you want to go?"

"Down to the weir. Will you come too?"

"Yes."

And she throws down her work and takes his arm.

"They are going to dance down in the village to-day," says she.

"I suppose that's where you would like to go too, you puss?"

She wrings her hands and groans, so as to give the most drastic
expression to her longing.

"But I cannot have my way; For at home I've got to stay," he hums.

"It's a regular shame," she grumbles, "that I have never yet in my
life danced with you.--And I should like to immensely, for you dance
well--very well!"

"How do you know that?"

"What a question!" she says with feigned indignation. "Think of that
rifle fête three years ago. All the girls told wonders of how well you
held them during the dance--not too loose and not too tight;--and that
you were tall and good-looking I could see for myself--but what good
was all that to me? You overlooked me as utterly as if I were nothing
but empty air."

"How old were you at that time?"

She hesitates a little, then says dejectedly: "Fourteen and a half."

"Well, that's the explanation," he laughs. "But I was then already tall
and--and--full grown," she answers eagerly. "It wouldn't have hurt you
to have whirled me round the room a few times."

"Well, we can make up for it in a fortnight at the rifle fête."

"Yes, can we?" she asks with beaming eyes.

"Martin is one of the patrons of the shooters' company. That is in
itself a reason for his being present."

Trude gives vent loudly to her delight; then in sudden perplexity she
says: "But I have no dancing shoes."

"Have some made for yourself."

"Oh, our village cobbler is such a clumsy worker."

"Then I will order you a pair from town. You need only give me your
measure."

"Will you really? Oh, you dear, darling Hans!" And then she suddenly
withdraws her arm, runs forward a few steps, calls out "catch me," and
whisks away. Johannes starts in pursuit,--but he is tired--he cannot
overtake her. Across the drawbridge of the weir the chase proceeds
across on to the vast grass plain, stretching as far as the distant
pine wood. Trude dodges him cleverly,--runs past him--and before he can
follow, she is once more on this side of the river. Breathlessly she
makes a dash for the chain by which the drawbridge is regulated; from
on shore--she tears at it with all her might; the wood-work moves
creaking on its hinges--and jerks upwards--at the very moment when
Johannes springs on to the foot-plank. He staggers, he cries out,--and
clutching hold of the main beam, he manages by sheer force to stem its
movement just as the gap is opening. Trude has turned as white as a
sheet, she stares speechlessly at him, as, gasping for breath, he gazes
down into the dark abyss.

"I didn't--think of that, Hans," she stammers with a look which very
eloquently pleads forgiveness.

He laughs out loud. A wild, devil-may-care feeling of happiness has
come over him.

"Oh you--you!" he cries, opening out his arms. "I shall have you yet."
And with a fool-hardy leap he jumps on to the narrow main-beam, which,
with its two slanting, roof-shaped sides, spans the river.

"Hans--for God's sake--Hans!"

He does not hear--beneath him is the foaming abyss--he has hard work to
keep his balance--he moves forward--he trembles he sways--three
more--two more steps only one more daring leap--he is over.

"Now run!" he cries, with a wild shout of glee.

But Trude does not stir. She stares in his direction, paralyzed with
terror. Like a tiger he springs towards her--he encircles her with
his arms--he presses her to him--she closes her eyes and breathes
heavily--then he bends down and lays his hot and thirsting lips upon
hers. She gives a loud moan--her body trembles feverishly in his
embrace. Then he lets her glide down--his affrighted gaze travels
around--has no one seen it? "No, no one!" And what if they have? May
Martin's brother not kiss Martin's wife? Did not he himself once
require it of him?

She opens her eyes as though awakening from a deep dream. Her eyes
avoid his.

"That was not nice of you, Hans," she says softly, "you must never do
that to me again!"

He does not answer and stoops to pick up the rose which has fallen from
her bosom.

"Let me go home," she says, casting a frightened look around.

They walk along side by side for a while in silence; she gazes into
space; he smells the rose he has found.

"Do you like roses?" he continues. She looks at him. "As if you did not
know that," her look says.

"By the bye," he goes on gaily, "why do you no longer put flowers at my
bed-side now?"

"He has forbidden me," she stammers.

"That alters the case," he replies, crestfallen. Then their
conversation comes to a standstill altogether.

On the veranda Martin receives them with a good-natured scolding. He
declares he is ravenously hungry, and supper is not yet served.

Trude hurries to the kitchen to give a helping hand herself.... The
meal is consumed in silence. The two do not raise their eyes from their
plates. An atmosphere of unbearable sultriness oppresses the earth. The
hot wind whirls up small dust clouds and bluish grey veils of mist
settle down slowly.

Johannes leans his head against the glass of the veranda window, but
that is as hot as if it had been all day in a fiery furnace. Then Trude
suddenly jumps up.

"Where are you going to?" asks Martin.

"Into the garden," she replies.

After a while they hear her mounting the stairs that lead to the turret
room. When she comes out again she gives Johannes a quick, timid look,
then takes her seat with downcast eyes.

From the village green come sounds of merry-making and screams of
enjoyment, mingled with the squeak of the fiddle and the drone of the
double-bass.

"I suppose you'd like to go there, children?" They are both silent and
he takes their silence for consent. "Well, then come along," he says,
getting up. Trude stretches out her arms in silent anguish, looks
across wistfully at Johannes, then with a shake of her head she says,
"Don't care about it!"

"Why, what's up?" cried Martin, quite taken aback. "Since when do you
get out of the way of dance music? I suppose you two have been
squabbling again, eh?"

Johannes laughs curtly and Trude turns away. Suddenly she gets up, says
laconically, "Good-night," and disappears.

A little later the brothers, too, part company.

With heavy limbs Johannes mounts the stairs--he opens the door of his
room--an intoxicating fragrance of flowers wells towards him. He draws
a deep breath and utters a sigh of satisfaction. Then this was the
reason for going at such a late hour into the garden! By the side of
his pillow stands a huge bunch of rose and jasmine. He drops into bed
as if he would like to bury himself beneath this mass of blossoms. For
a while he lies a-dreaming quietly to himself, but his breathing
becomes more and more labored, his senses grow dim,--at every pulsation
a poignant pain darts through his temples,--he feels as though he must
succumb beneath this overpowering fragrance.

Exerting all his force of will, he pulls himself up and pushes open a
window. But even this brings no calm, no relief. A very chaos of
fragrance wafts up to him from the garden--the wind breathes hotly upon
him, lukewarm, tingling drops of rain beat upon his face. Down in the
village the fires from the tar-barrels shoot fitfully through the
nebulous clouds of mist veiling the distance.

Johannes looks down. He is waiting. His heart is beating audibly. His
longing appears to him almighty--he will force that window below to
open and ... hark! Softly the latch is pushed back, one sash is thrown
open, and there, leaning far out, framed by waving unbound tresses,
Trude's face appears, straining upwards to him with mute yearning.

One moment--then it has vanished. He knows not--shall he exult, or
shall he weep?--Now he may sink into sweet unconsciousness--What can
the fragrance harm him now?

He undresses and goes to bed; but before he drops to sleep he once more
raises himself up, gropes with a trembling hand for the vase, and
buries his face in the flowers.

How like it all is to that first evening, and yet how different! Then
he was peaceful and happy; now ...

A suddenly awakened memory makes him start; his fingers clutch the
handle of the vase more tightly--he listens and listens--he feels as if
that merry laugh which then so softly sounded through the floor, must
at this moment again greet his ears--he listens with increasing fear
till his whole brain is humming and buzzing--an ugly feeling of hatred
and jealousy suddenly uprises within him; and, bursting into a wild
laugh, he hurls the vase far away into the middle of the room, where it
shatters with a crash.

Next morning Johannes is ashamed of himself. It all seems as if it had
been a bad dream. He collects the fragments of the vase, fits them
together and resolves to get some cement from the chemist and mend it.
Much as he considers the matter, he cannot explain the feeling which
prompted him to this act of apparent school-boy folly; he only knows
that it was something wicked and loathsome.

He presses his brother's hand more heartily than at other times and
gazes silently into his eyes as if to plead forgiveness for some grave
crime.

Trude looks pale and as if she had not slept. Her eyes avoid his, and
the cup of coffee which she hands him rattles in her trembling hand.

As he can find no better subject, he begins to talk about the dancing
shoes, wishing at the same time to sound Martin. He is quite agreeable.
Trude is to have her measure taken at once and when she objects to
taking off her shoes in Johannes' presence, he angrily calls her an
"affected little prude," She is offended, begins to cry and leaves the
room. Then towards evening she bashfully appears with her measure and
Johannes sends off his letter. The broken vase still weighs heavily on
his conscience. When he is alone with her he confesses.

"I say, I've done a clumsy thing."

"What?"

"I have smashed a vase."

"Indeed! was that simply clumsiness?"

"What else should it be?"

"I thought you had done it on purpose," she says, with apparent utter
indifference. He gives no answer, and she quietly nods a few times to
herself as much as to say, "It seems I was right after all!"


The days pass by. Relations between Johannes and Trude are cooler than
they were. They do not avoid each other, they even talk together, but
their former happy-go-lucky mode of intercourse is irretrievably lost.

"She is offended because I kissed her," thinks Johannes, but it does
not strike him that he too has changed his behavior towards her.

"Children, what's up with you?" says Martin one evening grumblingly.
"Have your throats grown rusty, as you never sing now?"

For a few seconds both are silent, then Trude says, half turning
towards Johannes, "Will you?" He nods; but as she has not been looking
at him she thinks she has had no answer and says, turning towards
Martin, "You see, he doesn't want to!"

"Don't I though!" laughs Johannes.

"Then why can't you say so at once?" she answers with a timid attempt
at responding to his cheerful tone.

Then she puts herself in position, folds her hands in her lap as she is
wont to do when singing, and fixes her eyes on the pigeon-house yonder.

"What shall we sing?" she asks.

"Must we part, beloved maid?"--he suggests.

She shakes her head. "Nothing about love," she says rather pointedly,
"that's all so stupid."

He looks at her astonished and after some deliberation she starts a
hunting song. He joins in lustily and their voices blend and unite like
two waves in the ocean. They themselves marvel at such harmony; they
have never sung so well. But they soon come to an end. The Germans have
not many folk-songs which are not at the same time love ditties. And
finally she has to submit.


            "Rose-bush and elder-tree,
            When my love comes to me!"


she begins, tacking on a "Jodler." He smiles and looks at her, she
blushes and turns away.--She has let herself be caught now.

The two voices grow full of wonderful animation, as though their
hearts' pulsation were throbbing through the notes. They swell
heavenwards as though impelled by waves of passion, they die down as
though the bourne of life were stagnant through intensity of hidden
woe.

            "No words can e'er express my love,
            In silent longing I adore.
            Question my eyes, for they will speak;
            I love thee now and evermore!"


Why do their eyes suddenly meet? What occasion is there for them both
to tremble as though an electric current were passing through their
bodies?...


            "There is never an hour in my sleeping
            When my thoughts are not waking.
            Their flight to thee taking,
            To thank thee for placing forever
            Thy heart in my keeping!"


What intoxicating passion vibrates through the notes!

How the two voices seek each other as if to embrace!


            "O'er the mill-stream bends the willow,
            In the valley lies the snow,
            Sweetest love, 'tis time we parted,
            I must leave thee, broken-hearted.
            Parting, love, is full of woe!"


The voices die away in tremulous whispers. It is over--longing and
hope, the pain of parting and the agony of death, all resounded in
these treacherous, swelling chords.

Trude's lips twitch as with suppressed weeping, but her eyes glitter,
and suddenly, standing bolt upright, she begins the old, sad
miller-song about the golden house that stands "over on yonder hill."

Johannes starts, and his voice falls in tremulously. They sing through
the first verse and begin the second:


            "Down there in yonder valley,
            The mill-wheel grinds away,
            'Tis love that it is grinding
            By night and all the day.
            The mill-wheel now is broken--"


Suddenly--a scream--a fall--Trude has dropped down in front of the
bench and is sobbing convulsively in the corner with her head pressed
against the wood-work.

Both brothers jump up--Martin takes her head between both his hands,
and, quite upset, he stammers disconnected, confused words--but she
only sobs more violently. He stamps his foot on the ground in despair
and, turning towards Johannes, who is deathly pale, he cries; "What
ails the child?"

Then Trude flings both her arms around his neck, raises herself up by
him and hides her tear-stained face upon his breast, as if seeking
refuge. He strokes her dishevelled hair caressingly and tries to calm
her; but he does not understand the art of comforting, poor Martin;
each one of his half-mumbled words sounds like suppressed scoldings.
She lets her head sink back towards the wall of foliage, her lips move,
and, as if she were continuing the song, she murmurs, still half choked
with sobs:


            "The mill-wheel--now--is broken!"


"No, my child, it is not broken," his eyes filling with tears, "it
will not be broken--not _ours_--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 they _are_," she laughs, "my toes burn as if they were
on fire! But I shall dance all the better for it--what do _you_ say,
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.


Henceforth come sad days for the Rockhammer mill.

When Martin reached home on that morning, when he found the whole house
quiet, as quiet as a mouse, he took the key of the mill from the wall
and slunk off to that melancholy place which he had built up as the
temple of his guilt. There his people found him at midday, pale as the
whitewashed walls, his head bowed upon his hands, muttering to himself
incessantly: "Retribution for Fritz! Retribution for Fritz!" The
phantom, the old terrible phantom, which he had thought was laid for
evermore, has cast itself upon him anew and is twining its strangling
claw about his neck.

The men had to drag him almost by force from his den. With weary,
halting steps he staggered out of the mill. His wife he found crouching
in a corner, with hollow cheeks and gaunt, terrified eyes. Then he took
her face between his two hands, looked for a while with stern looks at
the trembling woman, and once more murmured the mournful refrain:
"Retribution for Fritz! Retribution for Fritz!"

When she heard his ominous words, a cold shiver ran through her frame.
"Does he know? Does he not know? Has Johannes confessed to him! Has he
found out by chance? Does he perhaps only suspect?" Since that time her
soul is fretting itself away; her body repines in fear of this man and
in yearning for that other, whom love of her has driven away. She grows
pale and thin; her cheeks fade. She steals about like a somnambulist.
Round her eyes bluish grooves are outlined, and grow broader and
broader, and about her mouth is graven a tiny wrinkle which keeps on
twitching and moving like a dancing will-o'-the-wisp.

Martin remarks nothing of all this. His whole being is absorbed in
sorrow for his lost brother. During the first few days, he has hoped
from hour to hour for his return--hoped that he was possibly quite
unconscious of the words he spoke in the madness of intoxication. As
for him--he would verily be the very last to remind him of them. But
when day after day passes without any news of Johannes, his fear grows
more and more terrible, he begins to search for the lost one;--at first
with little result, for the intercourse between one village and the
next is very slight. But gradually one report after another reaches the
mill. To-day he has been seen here, yesterday, there--erring restlessly
from place to place but always surrounded by a band of merry-makers.
The people call him "Madcap Hans," and, wherever he appears, the
public-house is sure to be full--corks fly and glasses clink, and
sometimes, when things become specially lively, the window-panes clink
too, for the bottles go flying out through them into the street. Keep
it up! "Madcap Hans" will pay up for the whole lot. He will stand treat
to any one he happens to come across, and there are boisterous songs
and comic anecdotes fit to make one's sides split with laughing. Yes,
he's a fine bottle-companion, is "Madcap Hans."

Soon, too, various very doubtful personages appear at the door of the
Rockhammer mill, people with whom one does not like to come into
contact; such as the corn-usurer. Lob Levi from Beelitzhof, and the
common butcher Hoffman from Gruenehalde; they present yellow, greasy
little papers which bear his brother's signature and turn out to be
promissory notes with such and such interest for so many days.

Martin stares for a long time at the unsteady hand-writing; where the
strokes are all tumbling over as if drunk, then he goes to his safe
and, without a word, pays the debts as well as the usurious interest.
How gladly he would give the half of his fortune, could he buy his
brother's return therewith!

At length he has the horses put to the carriage and himself sets out in
quest. He drives miles away; he is about whole nights through, but
never does he succeed in getting hold of his brother. The information
he receives from the inn-keepers is scanty and confused--some answer
him with awkward prevarication, others with sly attempts at
concealment--they all seem to guess that their rich profits will go to
the devil as soon as the owner of the Rockhammer mill once more gets
possession of his scape-grace brother. When Martin begins to notice
that he is being taken in, he loses heart. He has the carriage put up
in the coach-house and locks himself in for several days in his
"office." During that time he is gravely considering whether it would
be advisable to secure the service of the Marienfeld gendarmes. For
him, of course, by virtue of his official authority, it would be an
easy matter to extort the truth from these people. Yet no!--it would
hardly be compatible with the honor of the Rockhammer family to have
his brother hunted for by the police--why it would make his old father
turn in his grave!

A cold, brought on by his nocturnal expeditions, throws him upon the
sickbed. Through two terrible weeks Trude sits by day and by night at
his bedside, tortured by his delirious ravings in which his two
brothers, the dead and the living one, now singly, now together,
transformed to one horrible two-headed monster, haunt and encircle him.

As soon as he is halfway convalescent, he has the carriage got ready.
_Some_ time he must find him!

And he does find him.

Late one evening at the beginning of September, his road happens to
pass through B----, a village two miles north of Marienfeld.

Through the closed shutters of the tavern boisterous noises reach his
ears--stamping of feet, brawling and drunken singing. Slowly he gets
out of the carriage, and ties up his horse at the entrance to the inn.
The lantern flickers dimly in the night wind--heavy drops of rain come
pelting down. The handle of the taproom door rattles in his hand; one
push--it flies open wide. Thick, bluish-yellow tobacco fumes assail him
as he enters, mixed with the odor of stale beer and foul-smelling
spirits.

And there, at the top end of the long, roughly-hewn table, with flabby
cheeks, with his eyes all red and swollen, with that glassy stare
habitual to drunkards, with matted, unkempt hair, with a dirty
shirt-collar and slovenly coat to which hang blades of straw--perhaps
the reminders of his last night quarters--there that picture of
precocious vice and hopeless ruin, that, that is all that remains to
him of his darling, of his all in all ...

"Johannes!" he cries, and the driver's whip which he holds in his hand
falls clattering to the ground.

A dead silence comes over the densely crowded room, as the tipplers
gaze openmouthed at this intruder. The wretched man has started up from
his seat, his face petrified with nameless fear, a hollow groan breaks
from his lips; with one desperate leap he springs upon the table; with
a second one he endeavors to reach the door over the heads of those
sitting nearest to him.

No good! His brother's iron fist is planted upon his chest.

"Stay here!" he hears close to his ear in angry, muffled accents;
thereupon he feels himself being pushed with superhuman strength
towards the fire-corner, where he sinks down helplessly.

Then Martin opens the door as far as ever its hinges will allow, points
with the butt-end of his whip towards the dark entry and plants himself
in the middle of the taproom.

"Out with you!" he cries in a voice which makes the glasses on the
table vibrate. The tipplers, most of them green youths, retreat in
terror before him, and hastily don their caps; only here and there some
suppressed grumbling is heard.

"Out with you!" he cried once more and makes a gesture as if about to
take one of the nearest grumblers by the throat. Two minutes later the
taproom is swept clear ... only the innkeeper remains, standing half
petrified with fear behind the bar; now, when Martin fixes his gloomy
gaze upon him, he begins to complain in a whining tone of this
disturbance to his business.

Martin puts his hand in his pocket, throws him a handful of florins and
says: "I wish to be alone with him."

When he has bolted the door after the humbly bowing innkeeper, he walks
with slow steps towards Johannes, who is crouching motionless in his
corner, with his face buried in his hands. He places his hand gently
upon his shoulder and says in a voice in which infinite love and
infinite pain tremble: "Rise up, my boy; let us talk to one another."

Johannes does not stir.

"Will you not tell me what grievance you have against me? It will do
you good to speak out, my boy! Relieve your feelings, my boy!"

Johannes drops his hands and laughs hoarsely: "Relieve my feelings!
Ha-ha-ha!" That secret terror that distorted his features before as
with a cramp has now changed to dull, obstinate stubbornness.

Wavering between horror and pity, Martin looks upon this countenance
in which deep furrows have left nothing, not a trace of his former
open-faced, good-natured Johannes. Every evil passion must have worked
therein to disfigure it so wretchedly within six short weeks. Now he
raises himself up and casts a searching look towards the door. "It
seems you have locked me in," he says with a fresh outburst of laughter
that cuts Martin to the quick.

"Yes."

"I suppose you intend dragging me with you like a criminal?"

"Johannes!"

"Go on. I know you are the stronger! But one thing let me tell you: I
am not yet so wretched but that I should resist. I would rather fling
myself from the carriage and dash my head against a curbstone than come
back with you."

"Have pity, merciful God!" cries Martin. "My boy, my boy, what have
they made of you?"

Johannes paces the room with heavy tread and snaps open the lids of the
beer-mugs as he passes.

"Cut it short," he then says, standing still. "What do you want with me
that you imprison me here?"

Martin goes silently to the door and lets the bolt fly back; then he
places himself close in front of his brother. His bosom heaves as if he
were laboring to raise the words he is about to speak from the
uttermost depths of his soul. But what good is it? They stick fast in
his throat. He has never been a fluent talker--poor, shy fellow that he
is, and how is he to find tongues of flame now with which to talk this
madman out of his delusions? All he can stammer forth is that one
question:

"What have I done to you? What have I done to you?"

He says the words twice, thrice, and over and over again. What better
can he find to say? All his love, all his misery, are contained in
these.

Johannes answers not a word. He has seated himself on a bench, and is
running the fingers of both his hands through his unkempt hair. About
his lips there lurks a smile--a terrible smile, void of comfort or
hope.

At length he interrupts his helpless brother who keeps on repeating his
formula as if to conjure therewith. "Let that be," he says, "you have
nothing to say to me; nor can you have anything to say to me. I have
done with myself, with you, with the whole world. What I have been
through in these last six weeks--I tell you, since I left the mill, I
have slept under no roof, for I felt sure it must fall down upon me."

"But for heaven's sake, what ...?"

"Do not ask me.... It is no good, for you won't get to know, not
through me.... Let all talking alone, for it is to no purpose ... and
if you were to entreat me by the memory of our parents...."

"Yes, our parents!" stammers Martin joyfully. Why did he not think of
that sooner?

"Let them rest quietly in their graves," says Johannes with an ugly
laugh. "Even that won't catch on with me. They can't prevent me from
going to the dogs nor from hating you!"

Martin groans aloud and drops down as if struck.

"It is just because I _did_ always think of them, because I tried again
and again to remember that Martin Rockhammer is my brother, that things
have turned out like this and not differently. It has cost me a heavy
sacrifice,--you may believe me that! I have behaved quite fairly
towards you, ha-ha-ha, brother--quite fairly!"

Martin inquires no further. The solution of this riddle is perfectly
clear to him. Old blood-guilt has risen from the grave to claim its
penalty.... He folds his hands and mutters softly:

"Retribution for Fritz! Retribution for Fritz!"

"For one reason, however, you are quite right to remind me of our
parents; I must not bring shame upon their name, upon the name of
Rockhammer! That is the one thing which has been worrying me all
along--even though it did not alter matters; for surely a man must
enjoy himself somehow ... ha-ha-ha! After all I am quite glad to have
met you, for we can talk things over quietly ... I intend going to
America!"

Martin looks for a while into his glowing, bloated face; then he says
softly, "Go, in God's name!" and lets his hand drop heavily upon the
table slab.

"And soon, too, what's more," Johannes continues. "I have already made
enquiries. On the first of October the ship sails from Bremen--next
week I shall have to leave here,--you know what part of our inheritance
is owing to me--I dare say, by the bye, that I have got through a good
bit of it already; give me as much as you happen to have handy in cash
and send it to Franz Maas; I will fetch it from him."

"And won't you come just once more to the--to the--"

"To the mill? Never!" cries Johannes starting up, while a restless
gleam, full of terror and of longing, comes into his eyes.

"And you expect me to--I am to bid you good-bye here--here in this
disgusting hole--good-bye forever? good-bye forever?"

"I suppose that is what it will be," says Johannes, bowing his head.

Then Martin falls all in a heap and once more murmurs, "Retribution for
Fritz!"

With burning eyes Johannes stares at his brother, crouching there
before him as if broken, body and soul.... He is quite determined never
to see him again ... but he must give a hand at parting!

"Farewell, brother," he says, approaching him, as he sits there
motionless. "Keep well and happy!" Then, suddenly, a warm, gentle
sensation comes over him. His brain reels. A thousand scenes seem
simultaneously to be evoked. He sees himself as a child, petted and
spoilt by his elder brother, he sees himself as a youth proudly walking
at his side, he sees himself with him at their parent's death-bed, he
sees himself hand in hand with him at that solemn moment when they
vowed never to part, nor to let any third person come between them.

And now!--And now!

"Brother!" he cries aloud--and loudly sobbing he falls at his feet.

"My boy--my dear boy." He sobs and cries with joy, and catches hold of
him with both hands and presses him to him as if he nevermore would let
him go.

"Now I have got you ... oh, thank heaven--now I have got you! Now
everything will come right again--won't it? Tell me it was all only a
dream--only madness! You did not know what you were doing--eh? You
don't remember anything of it--eh? I bet you haven't any notion of it
all--eh? Now you have woke up, haven't you--you have woke up again
now?"

Johannes digs his teeth into his lips till they smart and leans his
face upon his breast. Then suddenly a thought takes possession of him
and weighs him down and buzzes in his ears--a thought like a vampire,
cold and damp, and beating the air with bat's wings.... In these arms
Trude has rested this very day--this very day....

He jumps up abruptly.

Away from this place, away from this atmosphere--else madness will
really assail him!

He rushes towards the door. One creak of its hinges, one click of the
lock: he has disappeared.

Martin looks after him, mute with consternation; then he says, as if to
quell his rising fear:

"He is too excited; he wants some fresh air. He will come back!"

His glance falls upon the wooden clothes=pegs on the opposite wall. He
smiles, now quite reassured, and says "He has left his cap here; it is
raining outside, the wind blows cold; he will come back." Thereupon he
calls the innkeeper, orders his horse to be put up and has some hot
grog mixed for his brother, and a bed prepared for him. "For," he says
with a blissful smile, "he will come back again."

When everything is made ready he sits down on the bench and becomes
lost in brooding. From time to time he murmurs as if to resuscitate his
sinking courage:

"He will come back!"

Outside the rain beats against the windowpanes, autumn blasts are
soughing around the housetop, and every gust of wind, every drop of
rain, seems to proclaim:

"He will come back! He will come back!" The how's pass; the lamp goes
out.... Martin has fallen asleep over his waiting and is dreaming of
his brother's return.


In the morning the people of the inn wake him. Haggard and shivering he
looks about him. His glance falls upon the empty bed in which his
brother was to have slept. The first bed since six weeks!--Sadly he
stands there in front of it and stares at it. Then he has his
conveyance brought round and drives off.


This year autumn has come early. Since a week there has been a rough
north wind which cuts through one's body as if it were November. Gusts
of rain beat against the window-panes and the ground is already covered
with a layer of yellowish-brown half-decayed leaves off the lime-trees.
And how soon it grows dark! In the bakery a light burns in the swinging
lamp long before supper-time. Beneath its globe sits Franz Maas,
eagerly reckoning up and counting. On the baker's table before him
where as a rule the little white round heaps of dough are ranged,
to-day there are little white round heaps of florins, and instead of
the crisp "Bretzels" to-day the paper of bank-notes is crackling.

This is the treasure which Martin Rockhammer entrusted to him the
Sunday before, with instructions to hand it over to Johannes. He also
left a letter in which the various items of the inheritance are set
down to a penny.

Every morning since then he has knocked at the door, and each time
asked the selfsame question, "Has he been?" Then when Franz Maas shook
his head, has silently departed again.

To-day the same. To-day is Friday; today he must come if he wants to be
in time for the Bremen ship. Noiselessly he has opened the door and is
standing behind him, just as he is about to lock the money away. "I
suppose that is all for me," he asks, laying his hand on his shoulder.

"Thank heaven I you have come," cries Franz, agreeably startled. Then
he casts a critical glance over his friend's figure. Martin must have
been exaggerating when, with tears in his eyes, he described his
dilapidated appearance. He looks decent and respectable, is wearing a
brand new waterproof, beneath the turned-back flaps of which a neat
gray suit is visible. His hair is smoothly brushed--he is even shaved.
But of course his dark, dulled gaze, the bagginess under his eyes, the
ugly red of his cheeks, are sad witnesses in this face, eretime so
youthfully joyous.

And then he grasps both his hands and says:

"Johannes, Johannes, what has come over you?"

"Patience; you shall hear all!" he replies, "I must confide in one
living soul, or it will eat my very heart out over there."

"Then you really mean it? You intend--"

"I am off to-night by the mail-coach. My seat is already booked. Before
I came to you, I went once more through the village. It was already
dark, so I could venture--and I took leave of everything. I went to our
parents' grave, and as far as the church door, and to the host of the
'Crown,' to whom I owed a trifle."

"And you forgot the mill?"

Johannes bites his lips and chews at his moustache; then he mutters:
"That is still to come."

"Oh, how glad Martin will be," cries Franz Maas, quite red with
pleasure himself.

"Did I say I was going to see Martin?" asks Johannes between his teeth,
while his chest heaves, as if it had a load of embarrassment to throw
off.

"What? You intend slinking about on your father's inheritance like a
thief,--avoiding a meeting with any one?"

"Not that either. I have to bid good-bye to some one, but not to
Martin!"

"To whom else then?--To whom else, man?" cries Franz Maas, in whom a
horrible suspicion dawns.

"Lock the door and sit down here," says Johannes,--"now I will tell
you."

The hours pass by; the storm rattles at the shutters. The oil in the
lamp begins to splutter. The two friends sit with their heads together,
their looks occasionally meeting. Johannes confesses--conceals nothing.
He begins with that first meeting with Trude, up to the moment when
horror drove him forth from Martin's embrace--out into the stormy
night.

"What came after that," he concludes, "can be told in a few words. I
ran without knowing whither, until the cold and wet restored me to
consciousness. Then the post-chaise from Marienfeld just happened to
come along. I stopped it--at last I got under cover by this means. Thus
I came to the town, where I have been putting up till now. Lob Levi had
just given me a hundred thalers. With these I rigged myself out afresh,
for I did not want to face Trude in the dilapidated state I was in."

"Miserable wretch--are you going to ...?"

"Don't kick up a row," he says roughly. "It is all arranged, already. I
gave a note for her to a little boy I met in the street, and waited
till he came back. She took it from him in the kitchen without even a
servant noticing anything. At eleven o'clock she will be at the weir,
and I--ha-ha-ha- ... I too!"

"Johannes, I beg and implore you, don't do it," cries Franz in sheer
terror. "There's sure to be a misfortune." Johannes' reply is a hoarse
laugh, and, with burning eyes, his mouth put close to his friend's ear,
he hisses: "Do you really think, man, that I could manage to live and
to die in a strange country if I did not see her just once more? Do you
imagine I should have courage to stare for four weeks at the sea
without throwing myself into it--if I did not see her once more? The
very air for breathing would fail me, my meat and drink would stick in
my throat, I should rot away alive if I did not see her just once
more!"

When Franz hears all this he refrains from further discussion.

Johannes' restless glance wanders towards the clock. "It is time," he
says, and takes his cap. "At midnight the mail-coach comes through the
village. Expect me at the post office and bring me two hundred-thaler
notes; that will be enough for my passage. The rest you can give back
to him; I shan't want it! Good-bye till then!" At the door he turns
round and asks: "I say, does my breath smell of brandy?"

"Yes."

He breaks into a coarse laugh; then he says: "Give me a few coffee
beans to chew. I don't want Trude to get a horror of me in this last
hour."

And when Franz has given him what he wants he disappears into the
darkness.

It is high water to-day. With a great hissing and roaring the waters
shoot down the declivity, then sink down into their foaming grave with
dull, plaintive rumblings, while the glistening spray breaks over them
in one high-vaulted arch.

The howling of the storm mingles with the tumult of these volumes of
water. The old alders alongside the river bow and bend to each other
like shadowy giants come forth in their numbers to dance a reel in one
long line. The heavens are obscured by heavy rain-clouds,--everything
is dark and black except the snowy froth, which seems to throw out an
uncertain light against which the outlines of the wood planking are
dimly visible. Above that projects the rail of the little drawbridge,
in appearance like the phantom form of a cat, creeping with
outstretched legs across a roof.

On the drawbridge the two meet. Trude, her head covered by a dark
shawl, has been standing for a long time beneath the alders, seeking
shelter from the rain, and has hurried to meet him as she saw the
outline of his figure appear on yonder side of the weir.

"Trude, is it you?" he asks hurriedly, looking searchingly into her
face. She is silent and clings to the rail. The foam is dancing before
her eyes, in blue and yellow colors.

"Trude," he says, while he tries to catch hold of her hand, "I have
come to bid you farewell for life. Are you going to let me go forth to
a strange land without one word?"

"And I have come for the peace of my soul," says she, shrinking back
from his groping hand. "Hans, I have borne much for your sake; I have
grown older by half a lifetime; I am weak and ill. Therefore take pity
on me: do not touch me--I do not want to return again guilt-laden to
your brother's house!"

"Trude--did you come here to torture me?"

"Softly, Hans, softly--do not pain me! Let us part from one another with
clean and honest hearts, and take peace and courage with us--for all
our lives.... We must surely not rail at each other--not in love and
not in hatred," She stops exhausted; her breath comes heavily; then,
pulling herself together with an effort, she continues: "You see, I
always knew that you would come long before I got your note to-day;
and, a thousand times over I thought out every word--that I was going
to say to you. But of course--you must not unsettle me so."

His eyes glow through the darkness; his breath comes hot; and with a
shrill laugh he says:

"Don't make a halo round us. It is no good--we are both accursed anyway
in heaven and on earth! Then let us at least--"

He stops abruptly, listening.

"Hush! I thought--I heard--there in the meadow!"

He holds his breath and hearkens. Nothing to be heard or seen. Whatever
it was, the storm and the darkness have engulfed it.

"Come down to the river's edge," he says, "our figures are so clearly
defined up here."

She leads the way; he follows. But on the slippery woodwork she loses
her footing. Then he catches her in his arms and carries her down to
the river. Unresisting, she hangs upon his neck.

"How light you have got since that day," he says softly, while he lets
her glide down, then raises her up.

"Oh, you would hardly recognize me if you saw me," she replies equally
softly.

"I would give anything if only I could!" he says, and tries to draw
away the shawl from about her face. A pale oval, two dark, round
shadows in it where the eyes are--the darkness reveals no more.

"I feel like a blind man," he says, and his trembling hand glides over
her forehead, down to her cheeks, as if by touch to distinguish the
loved features. She resists no longer. Her head drops upon his
shoulder.

"How much I wanted to say to you!" she whispers. "And now I no longer
can think of anything--not of anything at all."

He twines his arms more closely around her. They stand there silent and
motionless while the storm tugs and tears at them, and the rain beats
down upon their heads.

Then from the village come the cracked notes of the post-horn, half
drowned by the blast.

"Our time is up," he says, shivering. "I must go."

"Now--the night?" she stammers voicelessly.

He nods.

"And I shall never see you again?"

A wild scream rends the storm.

"Johannes, have pity, I cannot let you go. I cannot live without you!"
Her fingers dig themselves into his shoulders. "You shall not--I will
not let you."

He tries to free himself by main force.

"Ah, well--you are going--oh--you--you--you are wicked! You know that I
must die if you go, I cannot--Take me with you! Take me with you!"

"Are you out of your senses, woman?" He covers his face with his hands
and groans aloud.

"So--this is what you call being out of one's senses! Does not even a
lamb struggle--when led to the slaughter? And you are capable of----Ah,
is this all your love for me? Is this all? Is this all?"

"Don't you think of Martin?"

"He is your brother. That is all I know about him. But I know that I
must die if I stay with him any longer. It makes me shudder to think of
him! Take me with you, my husband! Take me with you!"

He grasps both her wrists, and shaking her to and fro, he whispers with
half-choked utterance:

"And do you know besides that I am ruined and disgraced--an outcast, a
drunkard, no good at all in the world? If you could see me, you would
have a horror of me, good people shun me and loathe me--do you think I
should be good to you? I shall never forgive you for coming between me
and Martin--never forgive you for making me sin against him as I have
done for your sake. He will be between us as long as we live. I shall
insult you--I shall beat you when I am drunk. You will find it hell at
my side. Well? What do you say now?"

She bows her head demurely, folds her hands and says: "Take me with
you!" A scream of exultant joy escapes his lips. "Then come--but come
quickly. The coach stops for a quarter of an hour. No one will see us
except Franz Maas--the only one he will not betray us. In the town you
can get clothes and then.... Stop! What does this mean?"

The mill has awakened to life. A yellow light streams out into the
darkness from the wide-opened door. A lantern sways across the yard
then, thrown to one side, flies in a gleaming curve through the air
like a shooting star.

Martin lies in bed asleep. Suddenly there is a tap at the window-pane.

"Who is there?"

"I--David!"

"What do you want?"

"Open the door, Master! I have something important to tell you."

Martin jumps out of bed, strikes a light and hurries on his clothes. A
casual glance falls upon Trude's empty bed. Evidently she has dozed off
on the sitting-room over her sewing, for it is a long time since she
has known sound, healthy sleep.

"What is the matter?" he asks David, who steps into the entrance
dripping like a drowned cat.

"Master," he says, blinking from under the peak of his cap, "it is now
more than twenty-eight years since I first came to the mill--and your
late father already used to be good to me always...."

"And you drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to tell me
_that_?"

"Yes, for to-night when I woke up and heard the rain pelting down, I
suddenly remembered with a start that the sluices of the lock were not
opened.... Perhaps the water might get blocked up and we could not
grind to-morrow."

"Haven't I told you fellows hundreds of times that the sluices need
only be opened when the ice is drifting? At high water it only means
unnecessary labor."

"Well, I didn't touch them," observes David.

"Then what do you want?"

"Because, when I got to the weir I saw two lovers standing on the
drawbridge!"

"And that's why?..."

"Then I thought it was a regular disgrace and a crying shame, and no
longer--"

"Let them love each other, in the devil's name!"

"And I thought it my duty to tell you. Master, when Master Johannes and
our lady--"

He gets no further, for his master's fingers are at his throat.

What has come over Martin, wretched man? His face becomes livid and
swollen; the veins on his forehead stand out; his nostrils quiver, his
eyes seem to start from their sockets--white foam is at his mouth.

Then he gives vent to a sound like the howl of a jackal, and, loosening
his grip of David, with one wrench he tears the shirt at his throat
asunder.

Two or three deep breaths, like a man who is achoking; then he roars
aloud in suddenly unfettered rage: "Where are they? They shall account
to me for this. They have been acting a farce! They have deceived me!
Where are they? I'll do for them! I'll do for them, then and there!"

He tears the lantern out of terrified David's hand and rushes out. He
disappears into the wheel-house; a second later he reappears. High
above his head there gleams an axe. Then he swings the lantern thrice
in a circle and flings it far away from him into the water. He storms
along in the direction of the weir.

"There's some one coming," whispers Trude, nestling closer up to
Johannes.

"Probably they have something to do at the sluices," he whispers back.
"Don't stir and be of good courage."

Nearer and nearer hastens the dark figure. A beastlike roaring pierces
through the night, above the fury of the storm. "It is Martin," says
Johannes, staggering back three paces.

But he collects himself quickly, clutches Trude and drags her with him
close up to the woodwork at the weir, in the darkest shadow of which
they both crouch down.

Close to their heads the infuriated man races along. The axe, lifted on
high, glints in the half-light of the foam. On the other side of the
weir he stops. He seems to be gazing searchingly across the wide
meadow, which spreads before him in monotonous darkness without tree or
shrub.

"You keep watch at the hither sluice, David," his voice thunders out in
the direction of the mill. "They must be in the field. I shall catch
them there!"

A cry of horror starts from Johannes' lips. He has divined his
brother's intention. He is going to pull up the drawbridge and trap
them both on the island. And close behind Trude's neck hangs the chain
which must be pulled to make the bridge move back. His first thought
is: "Protect the woman!" He tears himself out of Trude's arms, and
springs up the slope of the river-bank to offer himself as a sacrifice
to his brother's fury.

Trude utters a piercing shriek. Johannes in mortal danger; over there
the infuriated man, the axe gleaming bright; but behind her there is
that chain, that iron ring which is almost tearing her head open. With
trembling hands she grasps hold of it; she tugs at it with all her
might. At the very moment when Martin is about to climb upon the
foot-plank, the drawbridge swings back.

Johannes sees nothing of it; he only sees the shadow over there, and
the gleaming axe. A few paces further, and death will descend swiftly
upon him. Then suddenly, in the moment of direst distress, he thinks of
his mother and what she once said to the enraged boy.

"Think of Fritz!" he cries out to his brother. And behold! The axe
drops from his hand; he staggers; he falls--one dull thud--one splash:
he has disappeared. Johannes rushes forward; his foot hits against the
draw-up bridge. Close before him yawns a black hole. "Brother,
brother!" he cries in frenzied terror. He has no thought, no feeling
left, only one sensation: "Save your brother!" whirls through his
brain. With one jerk he throws off his cloak--a leap--a dull blow as if
against some sharp edge.


Trude, who is half unconsciously clutching at the chain, sees a long
dark mass shoot down the incline into the white waters, and disappear
into the foaming whirlpool, a second later another follows.

Like two shadows they flew past her. She turns her gaze upwards towards
the woodwork. Up there all is quiet; it is all empty. The storm howls;
the waters roar. Fainting, she sinks down at the river's edge.


Next day the bodies of the two brothers were pulled out of the river.
Side by side they were floating on the waters; side by side they were
buried.

Trude was as if petrified with grief. In tearless despair she brooded
to herself--she refuses to see any of her relations, even her own
father. Franz Maas alone she suffers near her. Faithfully he takes
charge of her, kept strangers away from her threshold and attends to
all formalities.

There was some rumor of a legal investigation to be held against the
wretched woman, on the ground of David's dark insinuations. But even
though the statements of the old servant were too incomplete and
confused to build up a lawsuit upon them, they still sufficed to brand
Trude Rockhammer as a criminal in the eyes of the world. The more she
shrinks from all intercourse, the more anxiously she closes the mill to
all strangers, the more extravagant grow the rumors that were spread
about her.

"The miller-witch," people come to call her, and the legends that
surrounded her were handed down from one generation to the next. The
mill now becomes the "Silent Mill," as the popular voice christened
it. The walls crumble away; the wheels grow rotten; the bright, clear
stream becomes choked with weeds, and when the State planned a canal
which conducted the water into the main stream above Marienfeld--then
it degenerated into a marsh.

And Trude herself became entirely isolated, for soon she would not even
allow her one friend to approach her, and closed her doors to him.

Before her own conscience she was a murderess. Her terrors drove her to
a father confessor and into the arms of the Catholic Church. She was to
be seen crawling at the foot of a crucifix or kneeling at church doors,
telling her beads and beating her head against the stones till it bled.

She is expiating the great crime which is known as "youth."





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Silent Mill" ***

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