Meanwhile the sunset glow had become deep crimson, and faded again; the wind blew harder, and rocked the budding linden-boughs, and bore along with it the sound of a maiden's voice; an old song floated past Anna Maria out into the country:
"I had better have died
Than have gained a love.
Ah, would I were not so sad!"
Then she turned and ran along the damp garden path as if pursued; she stood still by the fish-pond, so close to it that the water touched her foot, and looked into the dark mirror. In these Marieken had sought oblivion when she might not have her Gottlieb! Was it really such madness, if one—? And Anna Maria stretched out her arms and sprang into the little decaying boat by the bank.
"Anna Maria! Anna Maria!" called a man's voice just then, through the still garden.
"Klaus!" she murmured, as if awakening; she tried to answer, but no sound came from her lips. With a shudder, she climbed out of the floating boat and turned her steps toward the house.
CHAPTER V.
Spring had come again. Two years had passed since that evening. In Bütze Manor-house there was a vaulted, out-of-the-way room, which was entered by a low, small door at the end of a dark passage; the windows looked out upon the garden. Tall trees forbade entrance to the light, which had to seek admission through an artistic old lattice-work as well. This had been the lumber-room from time immemorial. All sorts of things lay, hung, and stood there, in perfect confusion. Old presses and chests, old spinning-wheels with yellowed ivory decorations, and dark oil portraits on which one could hardly detect the trace of a face; a huge bedstead with heavy gilt knobs—a French general had slept on it in the year nine, and the late Herr von Hegewitz had banished the bed to the lumber-room as a desecrated object after that, for it had originally been made to shelter a prince of the royal family for a night. The wings of the gilded eagle who sat so proudly at the top were broken off, and his beak held now only a shred of the crimson curtain, as the last remnant of former splendor. Fine cobwebs reached from one piece of furniture to another, and yellowish dust lay on the floor, a sign that the wood-worm was undisturbed here.
Here Anna Maria stood and looked about her, as if in search of something. She scarcely knew herself just why she had come in here; she had happened to go by, and then it had flashed across her mind that it might be well to give the old lumber-room a breath of fresh spring air, and she had taken the bunch of keys from her belt and come in. The young linden leaves outside let one or two inquisitive sunbeams through the window, and myriads of grains of dust floated up and down in them. It was so quiet in the room, among the antique furniture. Anna Maria was just in the mood for it; she sat down in an arm-chair and leaned her head against the moth-eaten cushion, her eyes half-closed, her hands folded in her lap.
She felt so peaceful; the old furniture seemed to preach to her of the perishable nature of man. Where were all the hands that had made it? the eyes that had delighted in it? She thought how some time her spinning-wheel, too, would stand here, and how many days and hours must pass before strange hands would bring it here, as superfluous rubbish. Strange hands! She felt a sudden fear. Strange hands! For centuries Bütze had descended in direct line from father to son—and now?