"Tubby!" cried a powerful voice from the house. "Where are you?" And as Tubby looked up, she saw her father approaching with that identical stately tread. He must indeed have consumed many roses, for he seemed to be transformed--she had never seen him look like that in all her recollection. Could it be true--only today, at table, so lowering and ill-humored and full of disgust for everything ... and now ...! The red beard seemed to glow, the eyes sparkled, and he walked on air. Beate opened her eyes wide.
"That's fine, Frau Marianne!" cried Herr Rauchfuss. "You've actually taken this long sunny walk in order to be a little company for my poor girl. I appreciate it, I can tell you!"
The young girl looked anxiously at her father and the guest. What was this new idea of providing company for her? She had long been used to loneliness in her upland home. It was true, she had often wished that the Kirsten girls and their friends whom she met at the sewing-school and now and then at the Sperbers' would come up and see her; but then the thought came ... suppose they were to see her father as she often saw him--and the desire for company went out.
But Beate's loneliness had been a wonderfully strenuous loneliness. Like a little wild animal she had lived in the shady garden, had slept under the trees or out in the full sunlight, and dug and planted and run about through field and wood without any one questioning her movements. When it was time to work, she had stoutly lent a hand, at sowing-time or harvest, in stable and dairy, in the orchard and the vegetable-garden. The men and maids all respected her, and said, "Just see how she takes hold of everything, as sensibly as a grown-up person!"
And in winter she scarcely missed companions of her own age and kind; in the big servants' hall there was always something interesting to listen to--things were called by their right names, and a rough world grew up before her mind in which even the ghosts were of a concrete and tangible nature. In the servants' hall the atmosphere was fairly clean as regards jokes and silly stories. Like a child of the people, she soon knew all about love, but without any desire to experience it. There was nothing mysterious and alluring about it for her; it was a thing that had to be, like sowing and reaping, like life and death. For her there was no veil over the phenomena of the world, not even death. All was as it was, and must be accepted.
And so the relation between her father and the guest struck her at once as peculiar. In the servants' hall they had more than once tried to tease her by telling her that her father would some day bring a stepmother home to her. And now she thought, "Is this the one?"
She found the newcomer beautiful: her daintiness, her pleasant smile, her dark, well-arranged locks, all charmed her. In fact, the young woman seemed a wonder to her by the side of her own bashful awkwardness.
It was a lively afternoon up at the old farm-house; not for years had the sound of such bright feminine laughter been heard there.
The housekeeper got up an excellent tea and spread it in the garden under the same tree where Frau Rauchfuss had once watched her child dance, feeling like a departed spirit. She laid a clean white cloth on the table, and brought out some special fresh-baked little cakes. Young Beate cut some flowers and put a bouquet on the tea-table. Frau Marianne almost drowned herself in the abundance of her own amiability, and the captain was like the ghost of his departed youth.
Beate sat very still and looked on, comparing this one fine summer day with all the summer, winter, spring and autumn days that she remembered. She clenched her firm little hands in an effort to keep back the tears, and stared at her father, from whom so much sorrow had come to her life, and thought of the joyless existence of her mother.