The Silent Mill Part 11

"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 fete 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 pa.s.ses 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 role.

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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l-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 hoa.r.s.e 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 ap.r.o.n-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 hoa.r.s.e screaming offends his ear; these coa.r.s.e jests hurt him. He pours down a few gla.s.ses of cool beer and goes outside, with great difficulty succeeding in shaking off the importunate fellows.