A tall, broad-shouldered man came out from a barn-door, followed by a little dog, who flew at the stranger, barking loudly. The man called the animal back. At the first sound of his voice, Elsa, to whom the whole scene had appeared wonderfully familiar, as if she must have seen it before, recognised the honest farmer who had so kindly sheltered her last autumn.
“Herr Pölitz!” she said, holding out her hand. “You have forgotten me.”
A look of joy came over the sunburnt face. “Come, this is good of you to pay us a visit!”
“You knew, then, that I was in Warnow?”
The farmer smiled in his melancholy way.
“How should the like of us not know such a thing? But that you should have remembered us! My wife will be so pleased.”
He went towards the house. Elsa was very sorry to spoil the pleasure of these worthy people, but she could not permit herself even so trifling an untruth. The farmer’s face clouded, as she explained, with some embarrassment, that during the week she had been at Warnow she had never been beyond the garden, and had not now intended any visit; in fact, that she had not known that these buildings, which she had often enough seen from her window across the fields, were Herr Pölitz’s farm. “But,” she added, “I should have come had I known, or as soon as I discovered it. For that I give you my word.”
“We could not have expected it,” answered the farmer; “but since you say so, I believe you. But will you not come in!” he added hesitatingly.
“Yes, for a minute, to speak to your wife and to see the children.”
“The children!”
As they now stood before the door, the farmer laid his brown hand on her arm, and said in a low voice:
“Don’t ask after little Carl. Since Christmas he has slept over there in the churchyard. It was a sorrowful Christmas. But in a few days, if God will, we shall again have two.”
He left Elsa no time to answer, but opened the low housedoor—how well Elsa remembered the rattling bell!—called out to his wife, and showed his guest into the parlour on the left. As she went in, the figure of a woman rose up from a stool near the stove, whom Elsa in the dusk, which already prevailed in the room, with its small, dull windows, took for Frau Pölitz, but on coming nearer, saw that it was a young and pretty, but pale and sickly-looking girl. She greeted her in a shy and embarrassed manner, and went away without speaking a word.
“A sister of mine,” said the farmer, answering Elsa’s look, in a low voice and turning away his head. “Will you not sit down? If you will allow me, I will go myself and look for my wife.”
He went out. Elsa would have preferred to follow him. The close atmosphere in the little, overheated room nearly took away her breath; and worse than the atmosphere was the sense of misery which was so palpable here, and spoke so distinctly in the farmer’s melancholy face, in the girl’s white cheeks, in everything on which her glance fell—even in the gloomy silence of the wretched farmyard and in the dilapidated house. Had she fled from the splendid misery of the castle only to find the same helpless sorrow in the little farmhouse! But at least it was not self-made suffering, so that it must awaken compassion, though it could not revolt the soul like what she had just experienced. How could she refuse these poor people the only thing they had asked of her—a tender word of compassion?
The farmer came in with his wife. He had already told her all—that the young lady could only say a word in passing today, but that in a few days she would come and spend a longer time with them. “Hardly in a few days,” said the farmer; “we are going to have bad weather. I must even urge the young lady not to remain too long; it may break up this evening.”
He had been standing at the window, and now left the room, murmuring a few words of apology, of which Elsa only understood “roof” and “cover.”
“It is the roof of the barn,” explained his wife; “it is so rotten he has had to take down one corner, and must now cover it over as well as he can, that the storm may not carry away the rest. To be sure it may be all one to him. We must leave at Easter anyhow.”
“How is that?” asked Elsa.
“Our lease is not renewed,” answered the woman; “and no new farmer is coming either. Everything here is to be pulled down and a big hotel built, so they say. God knows what will become of us!”
The poor woman, who looked even paler and more worn in her present condition than in the autumn, sighed deeply. Elsa tried to comfort her with words of sympathy. “It would be easy for a man like Herr Pölitz to find something else, and if capital was wanting to rent a new, and perhaps larger and better farm, some means would be devised for that also. The great thing was, not to lose courage herself. She must think only of her husband, who took life hardly enough as it was, and whose strength would be paralysed if she lost heart. She must think of the child that remained to her, and of the other that was coming, and everything would come right.”
The woman smiled through her tears.
“Ah!” she said, “what a comfort it is to hear such words from kind people! It does not last long, but for the moment one feels lighter; and that is a great deal when one’s heart is so heavy. That is what I always say to the Captain. He is just like you.”
A thrill of joy passed through Elsa. Reinhold had been here! He had also
