He had reached the village in a few minutes, but he avoided the main street, running along the little gardens behind the cottages, till he came to Mother Claus' hut. Here he jumped over a low fence and entered through the open back door into the passage. He listened. Nothing was stirring. He only heard the ticking of the large Black Forest clock in Jake's room, and from the village street the laughter of a couple of children--Mother Claus' foster-children--who were wrestling in the sand to enjoy the evening sun.
"Now I hope to heavens there won't be some benevolent soul in the room," murmured Albert, cautiously pushing open the door which led into the old woman's room.
He entered on tip-toe. It was quite dark in the low, small chamber. Albert's first glance fell upon the chest, which was safe in its place in the corner; his next upon the old woman. She was sitting in the large arm-chair, "in which Baron Oscar had died." She had dressed herself in her Sunday costume, her oaken stick was by her side--one might have imagined she had been ready to go to Fashwitz to church, and had fallen asleep a little before undertaking the long, long journey.
"Is that you, young master?" she said, with trembling voice, and raising her head with the snow-white hair to look at the door. "Come nearer, quite near, that I may touch you. Where are you? It is all dark around me; I cannot see you. Is not the moon shining through the trees? Do you hear the nightingale sing? Listen! How sweet! how beautiful! Oscar, you must not abandon Lizzie; she will cry till she blinds her beautiful eyes; and you must tell Harald not to worry poor Marie so much, else she'll go out into the black night. Good-by, dear child!--Yes, I'll burn everything; it is all safe in the chest. Mother Claus cannot read, but the right man will come at the right time!"
The head of the poor woman fell on her bosom. Albert thought she was dead. He went to the chest, raised the heavy top, and hastily searched the contents. There were women's dresses, which could not have belonged to Mother Claus--city-made dresses, such as young ladies wore twenty-five years ago! withered bouquets, faded ribbons, a few simple articles of jewelry; a string of red corals; a little gold cross on a black velvet ribbon. All this might be of very great interest to somebody else; but Albert pushed it impatiently aside. And still he went on searching and found not what he looked for. At last--there! at the very bottom of the chest, in a corner, and hid under a black silk dress, quite a parcel--letters, documents--there they were! He slipped it into the pocket of his coat; he took with both arms what he had pulled out and stuffed it in again, pell-mell, as it came, closed the lid; and as he rose from his knees, was not that somebody coming? In an instant he was at the little window that looked upon the small garden behind the house. He opened it, he squeezed himself through the narrow aperture with a rapidity which would have done credit to an experienced housebreaker, crept on all fours through the currant-bushes, leaped the low fence, and disappeared amid the golden waves of a field of rye.
Just as Albert thus accomplished his retreat through the window, Oswald entered the room, breathless with haste. He feared he had come too late; he knelt down by the side of the old woman and chafed her withered, cold hands in his own.
And this touch seemed to restore the dying woman once more to life. She raised herself, and placing her hand on his head, she said, with a voice which sounded as if it came already from beyond the grave: "The Lord bless thee and preserve thee! The Lord give thee peace!"
"Amen," said Oswald.
The hands of the old woman fell gently on her knees. Oswald looked up. The light of the setting sun fell through the low window upon her face; it looked as if it were spiritualized in the rosy light. But the rosy light vanished, and the gray evening looked upon the pale face of the dead.
Oswald closed her eyes. From the other side of the house came the ticking of the big clock, from the street the laughing and shouting of the children at play.--What does life know of death? what death of life? What does eternity know of either?