He awoke as out of a dream when he heard a rustling and creaking of branches at the other side of the fence. He looked round amazed. Yonder stood Elsbeth in her white dressing-gown with a dark ulster hastily thrown over it.
At the first moment he felt as if he must run away, but all his limbs seemed to be lamed.
"Elsbeth--what are you doing here?" he stammered.
"Ah! what are _you_ doing here?" she retorted, smiling.
"I--I was whistling a little."
"And you came here for that?"
"Why should I not?"
"You are right--I am not going to forbid you."
She had pressed her forehead against the trellis-work and looked at him.
Both were silent.
"Will you come in?" she asked then--probably not knowing what she said.
"Shall I climb the fence?" he retorted, quite innocently.
She smiled. "No," she said, shaking her head; "they could see you from the window, and that would not do. But I must speak to you. Wait; I will come out and walk a little way with you."
She pushed a loose bar aside and slipped out; then she gave him her hand, and said, "You were right to have come; I have often longed to speak to you, but you were never there." And she sighed deeply, as if the remembrance of sad hours overpowered her.
His whole body trembled. The sight of the maidenly figure, who in her night-garb stood before him so chaste and unconscious, almost took away his breath. His temples hammered, he bent his eyes to the ground.
"Why do you not speak to me?" she asked.
A confused smile pa.s.sed over his face.
"Do not be angry," he gasped.
"Why should I be angry?" she asked. "I am so glad to have you for once quite to myself. But it is strange--quite like a fairy tale. I am standing at the window, looking at the moon. Mamma has just gone to sleep, and I consider whether I, too, might venture to go to bed, but my thoughts are so restless and my forehead burns--I feel so uneasy. Then suddenly I hear somebody whistling in the garden, so beautifully, so plaintively, as I have only once heard it in my life, and that a long time ago. "That can only be Paul," I say to myself, and the more I listen the clearer it is to me. "But how does he come here?" I ask myself, and as I want above all things to make certain, I put on my cloak and creep down--so--here I am now, and now come, let us go into the wood; there no one can see us."
She laid her arm in his. Silently they walked across the moonlit meadow.
And then suddenly she put both her hands up to her face and began to cry bitterly.
"Elsbeth, what is the matter?" he asked, terrified.
She trembled; her soft figure shook with noiseless sobs.
"Elsbeth, can"t I help you?" he pleaded.
She shook her head hastily. "It"s all right," she gasped; "it will soon be over." She tried to walk on, but her strength failed her. Sighing, she sank down into the damp gra.s.s.
He remained standing before her, looking down at her. "Let tears have their course;" that was the rule which he had already often experienced in life. All his timidity had left him. Here was somebody to be consoled, and he was a master at consoling.
When she had grown a little quieter he sat near her, and said, gently, "Will you unburden your heart to me, Elsbeth?"
"Yes, I will," she cried; "I have waited to do so these three long years. So long have I borne it, Paul, and I was almost choked with the burden, and have found no pitying soul in whom I could confide. Yonder in Italy and at beautiful Capri, where everything laughs and rejoices, I have often crept down to the sea in the middle of the night and cried out in my agony, and in the morning I have come back and laughed, even more than the others, for my mother--oh, mother, mother!" she cried, sobbing afresh.
"Be calm; you have me now, to whom you can tell it," he whispered to her.
"Yes, I have you, I have you," she gasped, and leaned her face on his shoulder. "You see I have always known that; but what good did that do me? You were far away, I was often nearly writing to you, but I feared you might have become a stranger to me and would misunderstand me. And since we are back I have only one thought: "I must confide in him, he is the only one who has known grief, he will understand me.""
"Tell me what it is, Elsbeth," he urged.
"She will die," she cried out aloud.
"Your mother?"
"Yes."
"Who told you so?"
"The professor in Vienna who examined her. He wore quite a cheerful face before her, and said, "If you are careful, you can live to a hundred years old," but afterwards he sent for me, and asked me, "Are you strong, young lady? Can you bear the truth?" "I beg you to tell me all,"
I answered, "I must confide it to you," he said, "for you are the only one who nurses her." And then he told me that she might die any day--unless--and then he gave me a number of rules which she must observe about eating and drinking and climate and excitement, and much more. Since that day I tremble from morning to night, and tend her and watch and find no rest. Sometimes the feeling comes over me, and I say to myself, "You are young and want to enjoy life," and then I try to be merry and sing, but every note chokes me and I collapse again. Of course, I must show a cheerful face to mother, and to father as well."
"But why do you not confide in him?" he interrupted her.
"Shall his life be poisoned as well?" she replied. "No, I had rather bear it alone than see him suffer, too. He has a happy nature, and loves her with all his soul--otherwise he is sometimes hasty and excitable, but to her he has never said an angry word--let him hope as long as he can--I will not undeceive him."
She leaned her head on her hands and stared straight before her.
He remembered his mother"s fairy tale.
"Dame Care--Dame Care," he murmured to himself.
"What do you say?" she asked, and looked at him with great, eager eyes, hungry for consolation.
"Oh, nothing," he replied, with a sad smile, "I wish I could help you."
"Who could do that?"
"And yet perhaps I can," he said, "you have only wanted somebody to confide in, you are not so badly off as you think--indeed, Dame Care has blessed you, too."
"What does that mean?" she asked
And then he told her the beginning of that fairy tale which he had kept in his memory so well.
"And how can one be freed from her blessings?" she asked.
"I don"t know," he replied, "mother never would tell me the end of the fairy tale. I don"t think, either, there is any deliverance. Such creatures as we are must renounce happiness of our own free will, and however near it may be to us we may not see it--something sad always comes between us and happiness. The only thing we can do is to watch over the happiness of others and to make them as happy as possible."
"But I should like to be a little happy myself," she said, raising her eyes to him trustfully.
"I wish I were as happy as you are," he answered.