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 pa.s.ses 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 t.i.tle-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 pa.s.sion, a "History of Pa.s.sion 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 partic.i.p.ants 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 fete.
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?"