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 house-door--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, over-heated 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 to-day, 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!"