Louder sounded the trumpets, and through the branches of the fir-trees joyful laughter met his ears.
A turfy spot in the wood had been selected for the principal scene of the festival. In the middle of it stood the platform for the musicians, on the right the tent of the village innkeeper, who sold sour beer and sweet cake, and on the left a place for dancing was fenced off, the entrance to which cost a groschen more, as one might read on a white board.
Round about in a big circle tables and benches had been placed where the different families enjoyed the supper they had brought with them, and through it all a jubilant, giggling, staring crowd was pressing, eager for either love or a good hand-to-hand fight.
The concert was already finished, the dancing had begun; on the firm, trodden-down moss the couples circled round breathless and stumbling.
The glow of the sunset lay on the open space, while the wood bordering it was already buried in darkness. Here were the farm-servants and maids from the neighboring hamlets; even the coachmen had left their carriages, because it would have broken their hearts to have looked on at these love-makings from the distance. Every bush, every small tree seemed alive, and out of the darkness came low, amorous tittering.
Shyly, like a criminal, Paul slunk round the festive scene. A fear of strangers had always been his peculiarity, but never yet had his heart fluttered so anxiously as at this moment.
“Is Elsbeth there?” Nowhere in all the crowd were there any traces of the inmates of the White House, but then his family also seemed to have disappeared without leaving any trace. Once he thought the cooing laughter of the twins caught his ear, but the next moment the noise had drowned it.
Twice he had already made the round; then suddenly—his heart threatened to stop from surprise and rapture—he saw, quite close before him, his mother and father sitting in peaceful intercourse at the same table with the Douglas family.
His father rested his elbows on the table, and, red with excitement, talked eagerly to Mr. Douglas. The broad-shouldered giant with the bushy gray beard listened to him silently, at times nodding and smiling to himself. The slender, delicate figure with the sunken cheeks and the blue rings round her eyes, who leaned wearily against the trunk of a tree and clasped his mother’s hand with her thin white fingers, that was his godmother, who had always seemed to him like an angel from the other world. But next to her—next to her, the lady in the modest gray dress, her fair hair simply combed back—
“Elsbeth! Elsbeth!” cried a voice within him; and then suddenly a wall of clouds sank down between him and her, and froze his innermost soul, and veiled his eyes with a damp mist.