"Mother, help her; say something to her," whispered Walpurga.

"No; let her quietly recover herself. Every wound must bleed itself out."

Irma grasped her hands, kissed them and cried:

"Mother! you've saved me. Mother! I'll remain with you; take me with you!"

"Yes, that I will. You'll find it ever so healthy up in my home. The air and the trees there are better than anywhere else in this world.

There you'll become well again, all this will fall away from you. Does your father know that you've run away, out into the wide world? and does he know why?"

"He did know. He's dead. Walpurga, tell her how it is with me."

"There's time enough for that; for, G.o.d willing, we'll be together a long while. You can tell me all when you're calm and composed. But now, drink something."

After considerable effort, the two women succeeded in drawing the silver-foiled cork. Walpurga finished the operation by taking the cork between her teeth and pulling it out. Irma drank some of the wine.

"Drink," said Walpurga. "It must be wholesome, for Doctor Gunther sent it to mother. But she won't drink it. She says she'll wait till she grows old and needs the strength that wine gives."

A melancholy smile pa.s.sed over Irma's face at the thought that the aged woman before her meant to wait until she grew old.

Irma was obliged to take a few more mouthfuls of the wine. When she complained of the pain in her foot, the mother skillfully extracted a thorn. Irma felt as if a gentle angel were attending her, and offered to kiss the old woman's hands once more. "My hands were never kissed before you kissed 'em," said the old woman deprecatingly; "but I know how you mean it. I never touched a countess before in all my life; but they're human beings, just like the rest of us."

Irma heaved a deep sigh. She told her rescuers that she would go with them, but only on condition that no one except themselves was to know who she was. She wished to live concealed and unknown, and, if she were discovered, she would take her life.

"Don't do that again," said the old woman, with a stern voice. "Don't say that again. It won't do to trifle with such things. That's no threat. But here you have my hand and my word of honor that not a word shall pa.s.s my lips."

"Nor mine either!" exclaimed Walpurga, laying her hand, with that of her mother, in Irma's.

"Tell me one thing," asked the mother. "Why didn't you go to a convent?

One can do that nowadays."

"I mean to expiate in freedom," said she.

"I understand you. You're right."

Not another word was spoken. The mother held her hand upon Irma's forehead, on which she now bound a white handkerchief. "It'll be well in a week, and there won't be a scar left," she said, consolingly.

"The white cloth shall remain there as long as I live," replied Irma.

She now asked them to provide her with other clothes, before she showed herself in Hansei's presence.

Walpurga hurried back to the inn near the landing-place. Here she found Hansei in an angry mood, and scolding terribly. Every interruption annoyed him. He had enough to look after, as it was. There was more work put upon him than upon the horses in the wagon. He was in that excited state, often produced by travel and change of abode, in which one's better self seems to disappear, and when a restless and homeless feeling renders its possessor excessively irritable. Besides that, the foal, beautiful as it was, had put him to considerable trouble. It had run away, and had almost got under the wheels of one of the wagons.

Hansei was very angry. Walpurga found it difficult to pacify him, and at last she burst into tears and said:

"Sooner than move to our new home in anger and hatred, I'd rather we'd all gone to the bottom in the boat."

"Yes, yes; I'm quiet; just try to be so, too," said Hansei, recovering himself and looking toward the lake as if Black Esther's head were again rising on the waves. He continued:

"But we must hurry on, or else it'll be pitch dark before we get there.

We've a good distance before us, and the horses have a heavy load. What are you about there? Whom have you got over there among the willows?"

"You'll know all about it in a little while. Just take my word for it, that mother and I are doing something that'll be a satisfaction to us as long as we live. I am glad that G.o.d has given me a chance to do something at this moment, when I would have liked to ask Him what I could do to prove my grat.i.tude. She's a dear, kind creature, and you'll be satisfied."

Walpurga spoke so earnestly and impressively that Hansei replied:

"I'll drive on with the household goods, and, if it suits you, you can follow in the covered wagon. Come as soon as you can. Uncle's here and he'll drive."

Walpurga nodded to Hansei, who started up the mountain with the loaded wagon. Then she went to a chest and took out a full suit. She carried the clothes into the thicket, where she found Irma sitting beside the mother, Irma's head resting against the breast of the old woman, who had wound her arms around her.

"Irmgard will be quite happy with us; we know each other, already,"

said the mother.

No one on earth knows what Irma confessed to old Beate, down among the willows by the lake. The old woman breathed thrice on her brow, as if her warm breath could dispel the charm.

"And now put on your clothes," said Beate. In the thicket, Irma exchanged her dress for the peasant's garb.

When she left the thicket and returned to the path, she kept her eyes fixed on the ground. She was now entering upon a new world--a new life.

She looked at the beings and the objects in the parlor of the inn, as if it were all a dream. She had come back to the world again from the depths of the lake. Here, life was going on as usual; there was eating and drinking, laughing and talking, singing, driving, riding--all this she had already left far behind her. She was as one risen from the dead. Silent, and with folded hands, she sat upon the bench, caring nothing for the world about her, longing for only perfect solitude. And yet her ear was so acute that she overheard the hostess whisper to Walpurga: "A kinswoman, I suppose," and, significantly putting her finger to her forehead, "she don't seem to be in her right wits."

"Maybe you're right," replied Walpurga. A smile, as of pain, pa.s.sed over Irma's beautiful lips: "There's one protecting disguise--and it is madness."

She felt if a net of thorns had descended upon her head. Insanity may, indeed, sometimes serve as an invisible cap, concealing, or rather disguising, the sorrow-stricken wearer.

CHAPTER XIV.

The grandmother was out of doors, arranging a bed in the covered wagon.

She told her brother to drive carefully, and not crack his whip so often; for Uncle Peter, known as the little pitchman, was so elated at the idea of having a whip and two horses under his charge, that he cracked his whip incessantly.

"The stranger's puttings on airs, I think. Who is she, anyhow?" asked the little pitchman, taking the thong between his teeth, as if he could only thus prevent himself from cracking the whip.

"A poor, sick creature," said Beate. It went hard with her to say this, and yet it was not a lie.

Hansei had gone on with the large team. And now the women, too, agreed that it was time to start. Irma now saw Walpurga's child for the first time, and, as soon as it caught Irma's eye, it shouted and wanted to go to her.

"Oh! that's lovely," exclaimed Walpurga and her mother at the same time. "She's always so shy."

Irma took the child in her arms and hugged and kissed it. She felt as if again embracing the childlike purity which, in herself, had withered and died. Her expression changed from one of joy to that of sadness, and the grandmother said:

"You've a good, honest heart; children feel and know that. But now you'd better give the child to Walpurga and get into the wagon."

A bed had been prepared for Irma. The grandmother got up into the wagon and, taking the child in her arms, sat down beside Irma. Walpurga and Gundel sat in front, looking about them. The uncle walked beside the horses, and would, now and then, cast a sorrowful look at the whip that he was not allowed to crack. No one spoke a word; but the child laughed and prattled and wanted Irma to play with her.

"Go to sleep now," said the grandmother, and in a soft voice she sang both child and Irma to sleep.