CHAPTER VI.
Whitsuntide was over. The brazen bells had retired into private life, and looked black and silent through the loopholes in the bell-towers, that seemed like the coffins of the melodious life which had so lately streamed forth from them during the holidays. But the bright flower-bells in the forest, hanging loosely on their stalks, could not forget the festival. They had joined in bravely when the air had quivered with the brazen clang, and still rang gently with every breeze that swept through the underbrush. What did they care that the wood-cutter, his holiday clothes and face all laid aside, tramped past them in his heavy boots, whistling some rude melody! The forest heeded not, but kept up the same mysterious murmur amid its branches like a thousand-voiced whisper of prayer, and the little birds sang as before their matin and vesper hymns in God's praise.
Up in old Castle Gnadeck, as in the forest, the festal spirit of the holidays still reigned, although Ferber had already entered upon the duties of his office, often making unavoidable visits to L——, while Frau Ferber and Elizabeth had, through Sabina, received several large orders from a ready-made linen establishment in L——, and were besides busy every day for some hours in the garden which even in this first year gave promise of abundant fruit and flowers. Notwithstanding this constant industry, there was a holiday air pervading the whole place, arising from the consciousness in the minds of each one of the family that there had come a happy turn in their affairs; they were continually comparing their present with their former situation, and the new and unaccustomed life of the forest had an almost intoxicating effect upon their spirits.
Her parents had given Elizabeth the gobelin room, because there was the finest prospect from its windows, and because the girl when she had first entered it had declared that she liked it best of all. The gloomy door which led into the huge old wing Had been walled up and gave no sign that such a dreary waste lay beyond it. The further end of the room was filled by one of the renovated canopied bedsteads, and by the window stood the antique writing-table, with its quaint inkstand and writing utensils of porcelain, and two vases filled with lovely flowers; while just outside the window, embowered in the topmost branches of a syringa bush, was the canary's cage; its occupant vying with the forest songsters in its shrill trilling with all the envy of some spoiled bravura singer.
While they were arranging the room, and Frau Ferber was every moment bringing in some new piece of furniture to add to it a greater air of comfort and luxury, her husband went to the longest wall, and, stretching his arms across it, banished to the anteroom the lounge that had just been placed there.
"Stay,—this space I appropriate," he said with a smile. Then he brought a large bracket of dark wood and nailed it upon the wall, which was wainscoted neatly to the ceiling on this side. "Here," he continued, as he placed upon the bracket a bust of Beethoven, "this mightiest mortal shall be enthroned alone."
"But that looks so blank and bare," said Frau Ferber.
"Only wait until to-morrow or the day after, and you will, I am sure, admit that my arrangements are not to be despised, and that Elizabeth will have both pleasure and profit from them."
And on the next day, which had been Whitsun-eve, he went to town with the forester. They returned toward evening, but did not enter through the gate in the garden wall. The great gate was flung wide open, and four strong men bore in a large and shining object through the ruins. Elizabeth was standing near the kitchen window, engaged, for the first time in her new home, in preparing the evening meal, when the men entered the garden with their burden.
She cried out, for it was a piano—a large, square piano, which was immediately borne up stairs and placed in the gobelin room under Beethoven's bust. Elizabeth laughed and wept at the same moment, as she rapturously embraced her father, who had expended his little capital, the proceeds of the sale of their furniture in B——, that he might provide her again with what had been the delight of her life. And then she opened the instrument and a flood of rich melody filled the rooms where the silence of death had reigned for so many years.