"No, it's you I want," said the lad, taking Barefoot's hand. "Will you dance?"
Amrei could not speak. But what need was there to speak? She threw everything she had in her arms down into a corner—jackets, neckerchiefs, caps, pipes, and door-keys—and stood there ready. The lad threw a dollar up to the musicians; and when Crappy Zachy saw Amrei on the arm of the stranger, he blew his trumpet until the very walls trembled. And to the blessed souls above no music can sound more beautiful than did this to Amrei. She danced she knew not how; she felt as if she were being carried in the stranger's arms, as if she were floating in the air, and there seemed to be no one else there. And, indeed, they both danced so well, that everybody involuntarily stopped to look at them.
"We are alone," said Amrei during the dance; and then she felt the warm breath of her partner as he answered:
"Oh that we were alone—alone in the world! Why cannot one go on dancing thus—on and on to the end of time."
"I feel," said Amrei, "just as if we were two doves flying through the air. Juhu! away into the heavens!" And "Juhu!" cried the lad gleefully, "Juhu!" And the sound shot up heavenward like a fiery rocket. "Juhu!" cried Amrei, rejoicing with him. And on they danced with ever-increasing joy. Finally Amrei said:
"Tell me—is the music going on? Are the musicians still playing? I don't hear them any more."
"Of course they are still playing. Don't you hear them?"
"Yes, now I do," said Amrei. And now they stopped, for her partner probably felt that she was becoming giddy with happiness.
The stranger led Amrei to the table, and gave her wine to drink, and did not let go her hand. He lifted the Swedish ducat that hung from her necklace, and said:
"This ducat is in a good place."
"And it came from a good hand," answered Amrei. "That necklace was given to me when I was a little child."
"By a relative?"
"No, the lady was no relative."
"Dancing agrees with you apparently."
"Oh, indeed it does! You see, I'm obliged to jump around so much all the year around when nobody is playing for me—and therefore I enjoy it doubly now."
"You look as round as a ball," said the stranger in jest. "You must live where the food is good."
Amrei replied quickly:
"It's not the food itself that does it, but the way one enjoys it."
The stranger nodded; and after a pause, he spoke again, half questioningly:
"You are the daughter of Farmer—"
"No, I am a maid," replied Amrei, looking him full in the face. The stranger's eyes almost fell; the lids quivered, but he held them open by force. And this struggle and victory of the bodily eye seemed to be a symbol of what was going on within him. He felt almost inclined to leave the girl sitting there; but he resisted and conquered the impulse, and said:
"Come, let us have another dance."
He held her hand fast, and the pleasure and excitement began again; but this time it was more quiet and moderate. Both of them seemed to feel that the sensation of being lifted to the sky was over and past; and this thought was evidently in Amrei's mind when she said:
"Well, we have been very happy together once, even if we don't see each other again in all our lives, and even though neither of us knows the other's name."
The youth nodded and said:
"You are right."
Amrei held the end of her braid between her lips in embarrassment, and after a pause spoke again:
"The enjoyment one has once had cannot be taken from one; and whoever you are, you need never repent of having given a poor girl a pleasure she will remember all her life."
"I don't repent of it," replied her partner. "But I know that you repent of having answered me so sharply this morning."
"Oh, yes, you are right there!" cried Amrei; and then the stranger said:
"Would you venture to go out into the field with me?"
"Yes."
"And do you trust me?"
"Yes."
"But what will your people say?"
"I have nobody but myself to give account of my actions to; I am an orphan."
Hand in hand the two went out of the dancing-room. Barefoot heard several people whispering and tittering behind her, but she kept her eyes fixed on the ground. She wondered if she had not ventured too far after all.
In the fields, where the first ears of wheat were beginning to sprout and still lay half concealed in their green sheaths, the two stopped and stood looking at each other in silence. For a long time neither said a word. But finally it was the man who broke the silence, by saying, half to himself:
"I wonder how it is that one, on first sight, can be so—so—I don't know—so confidential with a person? How is it one can read what is written in another's face?" "Now we have set a poor soul free," said Amrei; "for you know, when two people think the same thought at the same time, they are said to set a soul free. And I was thinking the very words you just spoke."
"Indeed? And do you know why?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell me?"
"Why not? Look you; I have been a goose-keeper—"
At these words the stranger started again; but he pretended that something had fallen into his eye, and began to rub that organ vigorously, while Barefoot went on, undismayed:
"Look you; when one sits or lies alone out in the fields all day, one thinks of hundreds of things, and some of them are strange thoughts indeed. Just try it yourself, and you will certainly find it so. Every fruit-tree, if you look at it as a whole, has the appearance of the fruit it bears. Take the apple-tree; does it not look, spread out broad, and, as it were, in round pieces, like the apple itself? And the same is true of the pear-tree and the cherry-tree, if only you look at them in the right way. Look what a long trunk the cherry-tree has—like the stem of a cherry. And so I think—"
"Well, what do you think?"
"You'll laugh at me; but just as the fruit-trees look like the fruits they bear, so is it also with people; one can tell what they are at once by looking at them. But the trees, to be sure, always have honest faces, while people can dissemble theirs. But I am talking nonsense, am I not?"
"No, you have not kept geese for nothing," said the lad; and there was a strange mixture of feelings in the tone of his voice. "I like to talk with you. I should give you a kiss, if I were not afraid of doing what is wrong."
Barefoot trembled all over. She stooped to break off a flower, but did not break it. There was a long pause, and then the lad went on: "We shall most likely never meet again, and so it is best as it is."
Hand in hand the two went back to the dancing-room. There they danced once more together without saying a word to each other, and when the dance was over, the young man again led her to the table, and said:
"Now I shall say good-by. But first you must get your breath, and then drink once more."
He handed her the glass, and when she set it down again, he said:
"You must drain it, for my sake, to the very bottom."
Amrei drank and drank; and when the glass was empty in her hand, she looked around—the stranger was gone! She went down and stood in front of the house; and there she saw him again, not far away, riding off on his white horse; but he did not look back.
The mist hung over the valley like a veil of clouds, and the sun had already set. Barefoot said to herself, almost aloud:
"I wish tomorrow would never come, but that it would always be today—always today!" And then she stood still, lost in dreams.
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