What the Swallow Sang Part 12

A succession of quiet days had pa.s.sed over quiet Dollan, and each one was to have been the last Gotthold spent upon the estate, but there was always some reason why another was added. Once it was the unfinished sketch, which must be more nearly completed; then Gretchen wept so bitterly because Uncle Gotthold was going that morning, when it was her birthday; on Thursday the rye was cut, the farm hands had a little festival in the evening, and had arranged all sorts of amusing sports in which, through old Statthalter Moller, they begged Gotthold to help them a little; on Friday a young architect arrived, who wanted to show a plan for the new house, and Brandow was very anxious to have Gotthold's opinion about it; the next day his departure could not be thought of, because Brandow would be absent on business all day long, and the day after the Herr a.s.sessor Sellien had promised to come with his wife, and Otto and Gustav Pluggen, Herr Redebas, from Dahlitz, and several other neighbors would arrive; there was to be quite a little company; Brandow had written to everybody that Gotthold would be there, everybody was antic.i.p.ating the pleasure of meeting him, and, in a word, nothing could be said about going away before Monday, and on Monday they would discuss the subject again.

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon; Brandow had ridden away in the morning and told Gotthold that he should not return before evening. The business must have been very urgent which could call the master away from his estate on such a day. Brandow was very much behindhand in getting in his rye, and moreover did not even have an inspector, though he had repeatedly complained to Gotthold of the stupid old Statthalter Moller, on whom he could not depend at all, so the crowd of laborers who were to-day employed in the fields and barn were left entirely to themselves. Gotthold had offered to take control of them, if Brandow was obliged to go away; but the latter, although he knew that Gotthold really understood the business, and that the people were fond of him and would have willingly obeyed him, most positively declined the proposal.

"It's bad enough for me to be compelled to commit the rudeness of leaving you alone all day; more than that you must not require. So long as it is possible to avoid it, you know I am not accustomed to incommode my friends."

With these words he had ridden away, and Gotthold had taken his painting utensils, in order to have an excuse for leaving the house and wandering through the woods and along the sea-sh.o.r.e; he strolled restlessly on without any definite purpose, until he recollected that he had heard from the old fisherman, Carl Peters, of Ralow, that Cousin Boslaf would return from his expedition to Sundin this very evening.

Carl Peters must know, for the old man had given him the key of the beach-house, that he might light the lamp in the evening and keep watch at night; besides, Carl Peters' son had accompanied Cousin Boslaf on his expedition. So Gotthold went to the beach-house and sat down to wait on the bluff in the shadow of the beeches; but the sea broke upon the sh.o.r.e with such a melancholy, monotonous cadence, the sunny hours dragged along so slowly, and besides, if he wanted to tell her that he had decided to leave Dollan to-morrow instead of Monday, this was the right time.

"The mistress is in the garden with Gretchen," said pretty Rieke; "you know her favorite seat."

Gotthold looked quietly at the girl, who hastily averted her face. The last remark was at least superfluous, for the garden was not so large that any one could not easily find the person he sought; but moreover Rieke had spoken in a tone which jarred upon Gotthold's ear. He had often thought the girl's merry gray eyes wandered from him to Cecilia, and from Cecilia back to him, with a watchful glance, and she had several times entered the room quickly, or approached them elsewhere, always with the question whether they had called her. He had remembered Cecilia's words on the first evening of their meeting, "She repeats everything," and mentally added: "She shall have nothing to tell."

"Well, her amus.e.m.e.nt will be over to-morrow," he thought to himself, as he went slowly up the walk, bordered on each side with hedges, towards a small spot, also surrounded with hedges and adorned with beds of flowers, where Cecilia usually remained at this hour with her child.

Gretchen came running to meet him as soon as she caught sight of him.

"Where have you been, Uncle Gotthold? What have you brought me?"

He was always in the habit of bringing the child some rare flower, oddly shaped pebble, or other curiosity on his return from his rambles; but to-day, for the first time, he had not thought of it. Gretchen was very indignant "I don't love you any more," she said, running back to her mother; "and mamma shan't love you either!" she exclaimed, raising her little head from her mother's lap.

Gotthold, after greeting Cecilia, had seated himself at a short distance from her on another bench, as he always did if she did not invite him to take his place beside her. She had not done so to-day, and scarcely looked up from her work when she silently gave him her hand. It had made a painful impression upon him, but as he watched her quietly, he thought he noticed that her eyelids were red. Had she wished to conceal the traces of recent tears, to hide the fact that she could still weep, that the cold expressionless glance with which she now seemed to look beyond him towards the child, who was playing at the other end of the glade, was not the only expression of which the eyes which had formerly beamed with such a gentle light were now capable?

"I can bear it no longer," the young man murmured to himself.

He had risen and approached Cecilia, who, as he came up, drew her dress away, although there was plenty of room on the large seat.

"Cecilia," he said, "I have given a half-promise to stay until Monday, but it occurred to me that the Selliens, if they come to-morrow, will probably spend the night here, and perhaps some of your other guests, and as your accommodations are somewhat limited;--"

"You wish to go!" interrupted Cecilia; "why not say so plainly?"

She had looked up from her work, as Gotthold began to speak, with a quick, pained glance that cut him to the heart; but when she answered, her voice sounded perfectly calm, though a little hollow, and she even smiled as she took up her sewing again.

"When do you wish to go?" she added after a pause, as Gotthold, unable to reply, was still silent.

"I thought of leaving early to-morrow morning," he answered, and it seemed as if some one else had uttered the words. "Carl told me that he should send a carriage to town then."

"Early to-morrow morning!"

She had dropped her work in her lap again, and for a moment covered her eyes and forehead with her left hand, while the fingers of her right, which rested on the work, trembled slightly; then her hand fell heavily, and she stared fixedly at the ground with a frowning brow, as she said in the same hollow tone: "What reason should I have to keep you?"

"Perhaps because you might be glad to see me here," answered Gotthold.

He thought she had not heard the words, but they had been distinctly audible; the pause only lasted until she was sure that she could speak again without bursting into tears. She would not, dared not weep, and now regained her self-control.

"You know I am," she replied; "but that is no reason for wishing to keep you. I feel too well how unpleasant life is here, how monotonous, how tiresome to all who are not accustomed to it, and one cannot become accustomed to things in a few days, it requires years, long years. So I invite no one--I cannot believe anybody takes pleasure in coming; and I detain no one--I can easily imagine that a guest is glad to go. Why should I treat you differently from others?"

"There is no reason, if I am no more to you than others."

"More? What does that imply? Oh! you mean because we knew each other so early in life, because we were friends when we were both young? But what does that signify? What is youthful friendship? And do we remain the same? You have done so perhaps, at least in the princ.i.p.al thing, but I certainly have not; I resemble the Cecilia of those days as little as--as reality resembles our dreams; and besides--I am married; a wife needs no friend, has no friend, if she loves her husband, and if she does not--"

"Let us suppose the latter case," said Gotthold, as Cecilia suddenly paused.

"The case is not so simple as it seems," she answered, examining the st.i.tches in her sewing; "yes, many cases may be imagined. For instance, it is very probable that he loves her, and even a woman of very little n.o.bility of character is rarely insensible to and ungrateful for true love; but granted that he does not love her, loves her no longer, perhaps never has loved her--well, then everything will depend upon how the wife is const.i.tuted. Perhaps she is not proud, and therefore not ashamed to confess her unhappiness to a friend, who might then venture to become her lover; or if she is proud, she will do--I know not what, but certainly she would conceal herself in the deepest chasm in the earth, rather than give way and say, no matter to whom, I am unhappy!"

"And if that is not necessary, if her misery is written on her brow, looks from her eyes, speaks in every tone of her voice?"

Something flitted over Cecilia's face like the shadow of a cloud; but she smoothed her work with special care, as she answered in a pa.s.sionless, almost monotonous voice:

"Who can say that? Who is so wise that he can read upon the brow of any human being the thoughts that are pa.s.sing within, without ever deceiving himself or making another's face the mirror of his own beloved vanity? But we have fallen into a very disagreeable conversation. Tell me, instead, where you are going when you leave here, and where you expect to live in future? You will not return to Italy? It seems to me you told me so a short time ago."

"Thanks for your interest in me," replied Gotthold, with trembling lips; "but I have made no definite plans as yet. When I left Rome, it was certainly with the desire to remain here in the North, at least for some time, and try whether home could ever become home again to me; but the attempt will probably not succeed, nay, I think has already failed."

"It seems to me that this is rather too soon to decide such a question," said Cecilia; "but the matter is probably of importance only to us; you fortunate artists have your home in your art, and you take that with you wherever you turn your steps."

"And yet, I think, we can have our art only at home," replied Gotthold.

"That is?"

"That is, that only in his home can the artist reach the highest point his talents will enable him to attain. I have formed this conclusion from the history of all arts, which have only prospered when the artists had the good fortune to be supplied with subjects furnished by the country of which they were citizens and the time in which they lived-for in this sense, time is also the artist's home: I mean: when they had the good fortune, and of course the power also, to be able to freely develop their talents on their native soil, and upon subjects furnished by their home. I have also drawn this inference from my own observation, which has taught me that those who were unable to find any materials for their art at home--subjects identified with the place and time--were no true artists, but either dilettanti and imitators, or positive charlatans, who deceived with their artificial productions, dest.i.tute alike of life and merit, only the great mult.i.tude--the beggarly crowd--to which they, in the inmost depths of their natures, certainly belonged."

When Gotthold first began to speak upon this subject, which at that moment was very far from his thoughts, he had only wished to soothe the tumult of his soul, or at least to conceal it from the pale woman by his side; then, carried away by the theme, he had spoken with a certain earnestness, and at last with a freedom of which, a moment before, he would not have believed himself capable. And so, at first absently, but gradually with more eagerness, Cecilia had listened; a ray of the old fire flashed from her dark eye as she asked,

"And does this apply to you?"

"It does; that is, it was a misfortune that through my unhappy quarrel with my father, and in consequence of several sorrowful memories upon which it is not worth while to enter here,--it was a misfortune that I was, in a certain measure, banished from my home at the moment when I could least dispense with it: the flowers I had sought for in the meadows when a child; the trees under which the boy played, through whose tops he saw the sunbeams glide and heard the rain patter; the skies which at one time could laugh so brightly and anon look so unspeakably gloomy, so infinitely dreary; the sea, over whose smooth surface, gleaming in the sunset, or billows black with storm, the fancy of the youth had hovered, sailed out to the regions of the Blest, and the mournful, misty realms of his dreams of battle and conflict and early heroic death: all this--I mean the things and the dreams--I might have been able to paint, to the pleasure and delight of others, in whom, by my pictures, I might have awakened memories of their own childhood, boyhood, and youth; what I paint now I have not drawn from my own soul, have not painted, cannot paint with my whole heart, so how can it, at best, be anything more than sounding bra.s.s?"

"Then why are you artists so eager to go to foreign lands?" asked Cecilia.

She seemed once more the intelligent young girl, whose radiant dark eyes reflected the restless ardor of her mind, from whose lips fell silvery laughter, and then grave, earnest words.

"I think this eagerness is often blind and foolish," replied Gotthold, "and, at any rate, I would always advise a young artist not to go to Rome until his own ideas are firmly fixed, or he will be a mere plaything of the winds and clouds. Goethe had written his works on German art, and long been a master of it, when he went to Italy; so he could quietly compose his Faust beneath the pines in the garden of the Villa Borghese, and return laden with the rich treasures of his observations of the country, the people, and the events which for centuries had taken place beneath its glorious skies, and yet remain to the very depths of his artist soul precisely the same as he was before.

It is just the same in the republic of the arts as in the state, Cecilia. What citizen could understand the great relations of the government who had not first practised his powers of vision upon the smaller affairs of the parish; who could render any valuable service to the parish, who had not learned to rule his own household; who could manage his house, direct and govern his family, who did not know how to rule and guide himself?"

Gertrude had come up while Gotthold was speaking; Cecilia lifted her into her lap, and the child sat there silently, as if she knew she must not interrupt. Now, as Gotthold paused, she said, "Mamma, I want Uncle Gotthold to be my papa!"

A deep flush crimsoned Cecilia's face, and she hastily tried to put Gretchen down, but the child would not give up the point so easily. She threw her right arm around her mother's neck, and said, coaxingly, "Can't he, mamma; he has such pretty blue eyes, and is always kind to you, and papa is often so horrid; can't he, mamma?"

Cecilia hastily rose with the child in her arms, and took a few paces forward, as if she wished to fly from the place. But her knees trembled, she could go no farther, and was obliged to put Gretchen down, who, alarmed by her mother's impetuosity, ran away crying, but the next moment forgot her grief at the sight of some bright-hued b.u.t.terflies which fluttered before her over the flower-beds. Cecilia still stood motionless with her face averted.

"Cecilia!" said Gotthold.

He had approached her, and tried to take the hand that hung by her side. She turned, and the face of Medusa confronted him.

"Cecilia!" exclaimed Gotthold, again extending his hands.

She did not draw back, she did not stir; the rigid features were motionless, except for the quivering of the half-parted lips, and then the words came slowly, like the last drops of blood from a mortal wound.