"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 ma.s.s 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 ca.n.a.l 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."