I entered the room. It was nicely warmed and lighted. The meal which had been prepared for me was still on the table.
Rothfuss drew off his boots and went off to his room on tiptoe.
"Do you not want to go to bed, Martella? Have you been sitting up all this time?"
"Indeed I have; and oh, do take it from me!"
"What ails you?"
"Oh, what a night I have passed! I do not know how it all came about; but mother had gone to bed, and I sat here quite alone in this great, big house. I looked at the meal that was waiting for our master; at the bread that had once been grain, the meat that had once been alive, and the wine that had once been grapes in the vineyard.
"It seemed to me as if the fields and the beasts all came up to me and asked, 'Where are you? What has become of you?' And then I could not help thinking to myself, 'You have so many people here--a father, a mother, one brother who is so learned, and another who is in another world, a sister who is a major's wife, and one who is a pastor's, and besides this, my own Ernst; and all these say: "We are yours and you are ours."' When I thought of that, I felt so happy and yet so sad. And then the two clocks kept up their incessant ticking. It seemed as if they were talking to me all the time. The fast one said to me, 'How did you get here, you simple, forlorn child, whom they found behind the hedge? Run away as fast as you can! Run away! you cannot stay here; you must go off. All these people about you have made a prisoner of you; they feel kindly towards you, but you cannot stay. Run, run away! Run, child, run!'
"But the other clock, with its quiet and steady tick, would always say, 'Be thankful, be thankful, be thankful! You are snugly housed with kindly hearts; do what you can to earn their kindness by your goodness.'
"They kept it up all the time. All at once I heard the cry of an owl. I had often heard them in the forest, and I am not afraid of any of the birds or beasts. Then the owl went away and all was still. I don't know how it happened, but all at once I thought of summer and cried out 'Cuckoo!' quite loud. I was frightened at the sound of my own voice, for fear that I might wake up the mistress; and when I thought of that I felt as if I could die for grief. And then again I felt so happy to think that the heart that was sleeping there was one that had taken me up as its own. When the large clock would say 'Quite right, quite right,' the busy little one would interrupt with 'Stupid stuff, stupid stuff; run away, run away!'
"When the hour struck midnight, I opened the window and looked out towards the graveyard. I am no longer afraid of it; the dead lie there; they are now resting and were once just as happy and just as sad as I now am.