It was a midsummer night. The alder-tree sent forth its perfume. The moonlight lay in silver veils upon the earth. There was great rejoicing in the village. Tar-barrels were lighted, and the farm-servants and maids were dancing on the green. The flames sent their glare far over the heath, and the shrill sounds of the fiddle came sadly through the night.

Paul stood at the garden fence and looked out into the distance. The servants had gone to the midsummer-night’s fire, and his sisters had not come home yet, either.

They had asked permission to visit the vicar’s daughter Hedwig, their playmate, who was an unpretending, quiet girl, in whose company he gladly trusted them.

Now he thought he would wait till they had all come home.

The moonlight drew him out onto the heath. It lay there in midnight silence; only in the heather a linnet chirped from time to time, as if in its sleep. The wild-pinks bent their red heads, and the golden-rod shone as if it wanted to compete with the moonbeams. Slowly, with hesitating steps, he walked on, sometimes stumbling over a mole-hill or entangling himself in the tendrils of the plants. The dew sparkled before him in shining drops. Thus he came to the region of the juniper-bushes, which looked more elf-like than usual.

The wood stood silent like a black wall, and the moonbeams rested on it like freshly-fallen snow. He found the place where years ago the hammock had hung; in the weird twilight the open space showed through the dark branches. It drew him on and on. Like a palace of dazzling marble the White House, with its balconies and gables, rose before his eyes. Deep silence enshrouded the manor-house; only here and there a dog barked and relapsed into silence directly.

He stood before the trellised gate, not knowing how he had come there. He grasped the bars with both hands and looked in. The wide yard lay yonder before him, bathed in the light of the moon; the big farm-wagons, which were ranged in a row before the stables, stood there in black outline; a white cat crept along the garden fence; everything else lay in deep sleep.

He walked on along the fence. On the ash-heap behind the forge lay some fragments of glimmering coals, which looked in the darkness like burning eyes. Here the garden began. High elm-trees bent their branches over him, and an overpowering perfume of laburnums and early roses floated through the trellis-work towards him. The gravel-strewn paths shone like silver threads through the branches, and the sundial, which had been the dream of his childhood, stood out darkly behind them.

The White House came nearer and nearer. Now he could almost look into the windows. Here, too, all seemed asleep.

He had read here and there in the Liederbuch, too, that the lover used to sing serenades to the queen of his heart on moonlight nights, to the accompaniment of either the guitar or mandolin if this was at all feasible. It had been thus in the beautiful days of chivalry, and in Spain or Italy might still be so. That occurred to him now, and he pictured to himself how it would look if he, Paul the simpleton, were to play the lute here as a knight-errant, crowing longing love-songs at the same time.

At this thought he laughed out loud, and then he remembered that he carried his instrument about with him everywhere. He seated himself on the grass, his back leaning against a post of the fence, and began to whistle—shyly and softly at first, then ever bolder and louder, and as usual when he was entirely given up to his feelings, he at last forgot everything around him.

He awoke as out of a dream when he heard a rustling and creaking of branches at the other side of the fence. He looked round amazed. Yonder stood Elsbeth in her white dressing-gown with a dark ulster hastily thrown over it.

At the first moment he felt as if he must run away, but all his limbs seemed to be lamed.

“Elsbeth—what are you doing here?” he stammered.

“Ah! what are you doing here?” she retorted, smiling.

“I—I was whistling a little.”

“And you came here for that?”

“Why should I not?”

“You are right—I am not going to forbid you.”

She had pressed her forehead against the trellis-work and looked at him. Both were silent.

“Will you come in?” she asked then—probably not knowing what she said.

“Shall I climb the fence?” he retorted, quite innocently.

She smiled. “No,” she said, shaking her head; “they could see you from the window, and that would not do. But I must speak to you. Wait; I will come out and walk a little way with you.”

She pushed a loose bar aside and slipped out; then she gave him her hand, and said, “You were right to have come; I have often longed to speak to you, but you were never there.” And she sighed deeply, as if the remembrance of sad hours overpowered her.

His whole body trembled. The sight of the maidenly figure, who in her night-garb stood before him so chaste and unconscious, almost took away his breath. His temples hammered, he bent his eyes to the ground.

“Why do you not speak to me?” she asked.

A confused smile passed over his face.

“Do not be angry,” he gasped.

“Why should I be angry?” she asked. “I am so glad to have you for once quite to myself. But it is strange—quite like a fairy tale. I am standing at the window, looking at the moon. Mamma has just gone to sleep, and I consider whether I, too, might venture to go to bed, but my thoughts are so restless and my forehead burns—I feel so uneasy. Then suddenly I hear somebody whistling in the garden, so beautifully, so plaintively, as I have only once heard it in my life, and that a long time ago. ‘That can only be Paul,’ I say to myself, and the more I listen the clearer it is to me. ‘But how does he come here?’ I ask myself, and as I want above all things to make certain, I put on my cloak and creep down—so—here I am now, and now come, let us go into the wood; there no one can see us.”

She laid her arm in his. Silently they walked across the moonlit meadow. And then suddenly she put both her hands up to her face and began to cry bitterly.

“Elsbeth, what is the matter?” he asked, terrified.

She trembled; her soft figure shook with noiseless sobs.

“Elsbeth, can’t I help you?” he pleaded.

She shook her head hastily. “It’s all right,” she gasped; “it will soon be over.” She tried to walk on, but her strength failed her. Sighing, she sank down into the damp grass.

He remained standing before her, looking down at her. “Let tears have their course;” that was the rule which he had already often experienced in life. All his timidity had left him. Here was somebody to be consoled, and he was a master at consoling.

When she had grown a little quieter he sat near her, and said, gently, “Will you unburden your heart to me, Elsbeth?”

“Yes, I will,” she cried; “I have waited to do so these three long years. So long have I borne it, Paul, and I was almost choked with the burden, and have found no pitying soul in whom I could confide. Yonder in Italy and at beautiful Capri, where everything laughs and rejoices, I have often crept down to the sea in the middle of the night and cried out in my agony, and in the morning I have come back and laughed, even more than the others, for my mother—oh, mother, mother!” she cried, sobbing afresh.

“Be calm; you have me now, to whom you can tell it,” he whispered to her.

“Yes, I have you, I have you,” she gasped, and leaned her face on his shoulder. “You see I have always known that; but what good did that do me? You were far away, I was often nearly writing to you, but I feared you might have become a stranger to me and would misunderstand me. And since we are back I have only one thought: ‘I must confide in him, he is the only one who has known grief, he will understand me.’”

“Tell me what it is, Elsbeth,” he urged.

“She will die,” she cried out aloud.

“Your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Who told you so?”

“The professor in Vienna who examined her. He wore quite a cheerful face before her, and said, ‘If you are careful, you can live to a hundred years old,’ but afterwards he sent for me, and asked me, ‘Are you strong, young lady? Can you bear the truth?’ ‘I beg you to tell me all,’ I answered, ‘I must confide it to you,’ he said, ‘for you are the only one who nurses her.’ And then he told me that she might die any day—unless—and then he gave me a number of rules which she must observe about eating and drinking and climate and excitement, and much more. Since that day I tremble from morning to night, and tend her and watch and find no rest. Sometimes the feeling comes over me, and I say to myself, ‘You are young and want to enjoy life,’ and then I try to be merry and sing, but every note chokes me and I collapse again. Of course, I must show a cheerful face to mother, and to father as well.” “But why do you not confide in him?” he interrupted her.

“Shall his life be poisoned as well?” she replied. “No, I had rather bear it alone than see him suffer, too. He has a happy nature, and loves her with all his soul—otherwise he is sometimes hasty and excitable, but to her he has never said an angry word—let him hope as long as he can—I will not undeceive him.”

She leaned her head on her hands and stared straight before her.

He remembered his mother’s fairy tale.

“Dame Care—Dame Care,” he murmured to himself.

“What do you say?” she asked, and looked at him with great, eager eyes, hungry for consolation.

“Oh, nothing,” he replied, with a sad smile, “I wish I could help you.”

“Who could do that?”

“And yet perhaps I can,” he said, “you have only wanted somebody to confide in, you are not so badly off as you think—indeed, Dame Care has blessed you, too.”

“What does that mean?” she asked

And then he told her the beginning of that fairy tale which he had kept in his memory so well.

“And how can one be freed from her blessings?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “mother never would tell me the end of the fairy tale. I don’t think, either, there is any deliverance. Such creatures as we are must renounce happiness of our own free will, and however near it may be to us we may not see it—something sad always comes between us and happiness. The only thing we can do is to watch over the happiness of others and to make them as happy as possible.”

“But I should like to be a little happy myself,” she said, raising her eyes to him trustfully.

“I wish I were as happy as you are,” he answered.

“If only this anxiety were not always with me,” she complained.

“Anxiety! you must let her be your friend, I have known her all my life, and when I did not know why I quickly found some reason. It is not so bad, either—if there were no anxiety, one would not know for what purpose one lives. But only think how contented you might be. You see nothing but merry faces surrounding you. Your mother feels happy in spite of all her sufferings, does she not?”

“Yes, thank God,” she replied, “she has no idea how ill she is.”

“There you see! and your father has no idea of it, either. No care weighs on them, they love each other, and love you as well. No angry word is spoken among you, and when your mother at last closes her eyes she will perhaps do so with a smile on her lips, and be able to say, ‘I have always been very happy.’ Do tell me—what more can you wish for?”

“But she shall not die,’ cried Elsbeth.

“Why not? he asked, ‘is death so terrible?”

“Not for her but for myself.

“There must not be any question of one’s self,” he replied, pressing his lips firmly together, “one must just try to bear it the best one can. Death is only terrible when one has waited for happiness all through life and it has not come. Then one must feel as if one had to get up hungry from a richly spread table, and I should like to save any one I love from that. You see I have a mother, too, she also wished to be happy once, and even yet would like far too much to be so. I am the only one who could take care from her shoulders, and I am not able to do so. What do you think I must feel in this case? I see how she grows old in sorrow and need, I can count the wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks. Her mouth falls in and her chin grows long. It is a long time since she spoke any loud word, from day to day she becomes quieter, and so, quietly, she will die one day, and I shall be standing by and shall say, ‘It is my fault, I have not been able to give her one single day of happiness.”

“Poor fellow,” she whispered, “can’t I help you at all?”

“No one can help me as long as my father—” he stopped, terrified at the course of his own thoughts.

Both were silent They sat there for a long time without moving, their twenty year old heads leaning on their hands bowed with care. The moonbeams lay like silver on their hair, which the soft wind of the heath ruffled gently.

Then the shadow of a cloud passed over them They both trembled. They felt as if the sad fairy whom they called Dame Care were spreading her sombre wings over them.

“I will go home,” Elsbeth said, rising.

“Go, with God’s blessing,” he answered, solemnly.

She seized both his hands “Thank you,” she said, softly, “you have done me much, much good.”

“And if you need me again—”

“Then I shall come and whistle for you,” she answered, smiling.

And then they parted.

As in a dream Paul walked through the dark wood. The fir trees rustled softly, the moonbeams were dancing on the moss.

“It is strange,” he thought, “that they all tell me their woes,” and he concluded from that that he was the happiest of them all. “Or the unhappiest,” he added, meditatively, but then he laughed mysteriously and threw his cap high in the air.

When he stepped out into the light on the heath he saw two shadows flitting before him which disappeared in the misty distance.

Immediately after he heard something rustle in the juniper bushes.

He turned quickly round and saw another shadowy couple, who seemed to sink into the ground behind a bush.

“The whole heath seems alive to-day,” he murmured, and added, smiling, “of course, it is mid summer night.”

Soon after him the twins came home with wild hair and flushed faces. They declared the vicar had told them their fortunes by cards till midnight. They would soon get husbands.

Giggling, they slipped away into their bedroom.