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Updated: June 27, 2025
My arm aches, and my hand trembles so that I can but just carry my cup to my lips." Wilhelm made no reply, but held his right hand straight out at arm's length, with the delicate figure he was carving poised on his forefinger. It stood as steady as on the firm ground. Carlen looked at him admiringly. "It is good to be so steady-handed," she said; "you must be strong, Wilhelm."
What had he been about, that he had not seen this? He, the loving comrade brother, to be slower of sight than the hard, grasping parent! "I will ask mother," he thought. "I can't ask Carlen now! It is too late." He found his mother in the kitchen, busy getting the bountiful supper which was a daily ordinance in the Weitbreck religion.
Finding that the tale could not be kept secret, John nerved himself to tell it to Carlen. She heard it in silence from beginning to end, asked a few searching questions, and then to John's unutterable astonishment said: "Wilhelm never killed that man. You have none of you stopped to see if there was proof." "But why did he fly, Liebchen?" asked John.
"How long have you been in this country?" "Ten days." "Where are your friends?" "I haf none." "None?" "None." These replies were given in a tone as melancholy as the expression of the face. Carlen stood still, her wheel arrested, the yarn between her thumb and ringer, her eyes fastened on the stranger's face. A thrill of unspeakable pity stirred her.
What could a girl give, do, or be, that would be too much for one so stricken, so lonely as was Wilhelm! The melancholy beauty of his face, his lithe figure, his great strength, all combined to heighten this impression, and to fan the flames of the passion in Carlen's virgin soul. It was indeed, as John had sorrowfully said to himself, "too late" to speak to Carlen.
"The mother tells me each time how to wind the warp, as she did when I was little; and she will always look into the churn for herself. I think it is the way we are made. We will do the same when we are old, John, and our children will be wondering at us!" John laughed. This was always the way with Carlen. She could put a man in good humor in a few minutes, however cross he felt in the beginning.
This brother had brought news which, too late, vindicated the memory of Wilhelm. Carlen had been right. He was no murderer. It was with struggling emotions that Carlen heard the tale; pride, joy, passionate regret, old affection, revived.
"Well, why doesn't he see that, then, and treat me as a man ought to be treated?" exclaimed John; "he thinks I'm no older than when he used to beat me with the strap." "I think fathers and mothers are always that way," said the gentle, cheery Carlen, with a low laugh.
It had produced scarce a ripple on the monotonous surface of his habitual gloom. But Carlen had perceived all, both the look on John's face and the bewilderment on Wilhelm's; and it roused in her a resentment so fierce toward John, she could not forbear showing it. "How cruel!" she thought. "As if the poor fellow had not all he could bear already without being treated unkindly by us!"
Now that, after longer reflection, he had become sure in his own mind that Wilhelm cared nothing for his sister, he felt an instinctive shrinking from recognizing to himself, or letting it be recognized between them, that she unwooed had learned to love. His heart ached with dread of the suffering which might be in store for her. Carlen herself cut the gordian knot.
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