He gave her the glass, but she put it down untasted, and he said,—“You must drink it for my sake, to the very last drop.”
Amrie continued drinking, and when at last she held the empty glass in her hand and looked round, the stranger had vanished. She went down to the house door, and there she saw him not very far off upon his white horse, but he did not look back.
The evening mist spread like a veil of clouds over the valley; the sun was already down. Amrie said aloud, as to herself, “I wish it might never be morning again,—always to-day, always to-day,” and she stood lost in dreams. Night came quickly down. The thin sickle of the moon stood just above the mountain, and not far from it, towards Holdenbrunn, the evening star. One Berner wagon after the other drove off. Barefoot stood by that of her family which was getting ready. Then Rose came out and said to her brother, “that she had promised the young men and maidens from their village to walk back with them, and of course it is well understood that a farmer and his maid-servant cannot go home together.” The Berner wagon rattled by. Rose must have seen Barefoot, but she made believe not to observe her, and Amrie walked on the way the stranger had ridden. “Where is he now?” she thought. “How many hundred villages and hamlets lie in this direction, and who can say where he has gone?”
Amrie found the place where early in the morning he had greeted her. She repeated aloud the question and answer that had passed between them. She sat again behind the hazel-hedge, where in the morning she had slept and dreamed. A golden-hammer sat upon a slender spray, and the six notes of her song sounded exactly, “What do you still do there? What do you still do there?” Barefoot had to-day lived a whole life through. Had it, indeed, been only one day?
She turned back to the village, but did not go up to the dancing-hall again. Now she took the road again homewards by the Holdenbrunn; but when half way, she suddenly turned back again. It seemed as though she could not tear herself away from the place where she had been so happy; and to excuse herself, she said, “It was not safe for her to go home alone; and she would join some of the girls and young men of her village.” As she came before the alehouse in Endringen, many from their village were collected; but they merely greeted her with,—
“So, it is you, Barefoot?”
There was running backwards and forwards, and many who had been in a hurry to get home, returned to dance once more. Young men from other villages came up, and begged and pressed for only one more dance. Barefoot returned with the rest, but only to look on. At last it was agreed, that those who wished to continue dancing should be left behind.
Not without much trouble, the Holdenbrunner troop were collected before the door of the house. A part of the musicians agreed to go with them to the end of the village. Many a sleepy father of a family was drawn to the window by the music; here and there came a married playmate, who went no longer to dances, looking out to wish them “Good luck on the way.”
The night was dark; they had taken long pine-branches as torches, and the young fellows who bore them danced backwards and forwards with them. Scarcely had they gone a few steps, after the music left them, than they cried out, “that the torches dazzled and confused them,” and they were extinguished in a ditch. Now several, both men and women, were missed, and when they were called, answered from a distance. Rose was followed by the son of Farmer Kappel from Lauterbach, and scarcely had her companions joined her, when she cried out, “that she would have nothing to do with them.” Some of the young men began to sing, and others joined in, but there was no true harmony. Many jokes were made by the grandson of the Plaster-grinder Monika, of which the young tailor’s apprentice was the principal butt. At length they began singing again, this time in unison, and it sounded full and clear.
Barefoot was always a good distance behind her village companions; they suffered her to be alone, and that was the best they could do for her. She was with them, and yet not of them; and as she looked often around upon the fields and woods, how wonderful in the dark was the change. The night is so strange, and yet so confidential. The whole world was as wonderful to her as she had become to herself. As one step followed another, she seemed to be drawn along without any volition of her own; she knew not that she moved. She only knew that her thoughts ran here and there, so confusedly, that she could neither overtake nor follow them. Her cheeks glowed as though every star in the vault of Heaven were a heat-inspiring sun, and sent its beams into her heart. At this moment, as though she had herself begun, and herself had given the tune, her own villagers sang the song that came to her lips in the morning,—