Elsbeth looked at him wonderingly, and the vicar called him to order. Then he became terrified at his own audacity. The Erdmanns must have understood that on this subject he would not stand any joking, and made no further attempts to tease him about Elsbeth.
The confirmation took place on the last Sunday before Whitsuntide. The night before, Paul could not sleep, and at sunrise quietly got up, put on the new clothes which his good aunt had sent him for this occasion, and took a walk through the quiet yard and over the dewy fields, till he reached the moor, which in its flowery garb lay brightly extended before him.
At the sight of the rising sun he folded his hands and said an ardent prayer. From this day forth he resolved to begin a new and better life, forgive all offences, and love his enemies, as Jesus Christ had commanded. Then he thought of the knife which he had once ground with a view to the Erdmanns; he pulled it out of his pocket and threw it far away over the moor, where it sank down in the swamp with a gurgling sound. Hot tears streamed from his eyes; he thought himself bad and reprobate, and totally unworthy to stand before God’s altar; he scarcely dared to go home to the farm; only when the twins came rushing towards him in their brand-new muslin dresses did he feel happier and easier in his mind. He embraced his sisters, and vowed in silence to be a true friend and support to them.
Then came his mother, dressed in a faded silk gown, kissed him on his forehead and cheeks, and held his face between her two hands for a long while, looking fixedly into his eyes. She wanted to say something to him, but she could get out nothing more than “My boy, my dear boy!”
Even his father was in the rosiest humor to-day. He took both Paul’s hands in his, and made him a long speech as to how he must learn to look out for what was great in human life, and to emulate him, his father, who, though always pursued by misfortune and plundered by the wickedness of men, had never allowed himself to be discouraged from aspiring to the stars, even in this miserable hole into which adverse fate had let him sink. And he knitted his brows and ruffled his hair, every inch of him grandeur and importance.
Paul kissed both his hands and promised everything. At eight o’clock he saw on the high-road which led across the heath a carriage roll by, the silver ornaments of which sparkled in the morning sun.
For a long time he looked after it. Everything seemed to him like a dream. He felt so exultantly glad that he was almost overpowered by happiness. “How have I deserved all this?” he asked himself; and then he began brooding over what the first trouble would be which would drag him down from this bliss. When the twins announced to him that the carriage stood ready for the drive to church he felt sad and depressed.
In the vicarage garden, where syringa and lilac were in bloom, and where the sunbeams glittered on the lawn, stood two little groups of human beings apart from each other—one black, the other white. The former were the boys, the latter the girls.
Elsbeth, in her snowy muslin dress with a lace handkerchief crossed over her bosom, looked white and graceful as a hawthorn blossom.
Her cheeks were very pale, and she kept her eyes lowered, and played alternately with her hymn-book and a twig of lilac, both of which she held in her hand.