What the Swallow Sang Part 14

The old man started up and strode hastily to the sh.o.r.e, where he stood with his face turned towards the sea; his white hair fluttered in the wind; he raised his arms towards the dark waters, and then let them fall again, muttering unintelligible words. Gotthold still kept by his side; had the old man become childish, or had he gone mad?

"What is the matter, Cousin Boslaf?" he asked.

"Cousin Boslaf!" shrieked the old man, "ay, Cousin Boslaf! He called me so, and she too, and all the rest with them and after them, my children, and children's children!"

"Cousin Boslaf!"

"Always Cousin Boslaf! Yes, it is quite right, and will be placed on my gravestone. I have sworn that no human being should ever hear the tale, but I can bear it no longer. One man shall learn the crime we committed against mankind, that he may forgive us our sin in the name of mankind.

I have always loved you, and to-day I saved your life, so you shall be the man."

He led Gotthold back to the bench.

"You have probably heard of the contest I had with my Cousin Adolf about Dollan?"

"Yes," replied Gotthold, "and have thought of it all very recently as I came to visit you, and in the depths of my heart praised the rare magnanimity with which you resigned the rich estate and beloved maiden to your cousin, after you learned that he was preferred by her. Emma von Dahlitz, Ulrica's confidante, brought you this message the evening before the decisive day; was it not so?"

"Yes," said Cousin Boslaf, "only the message was false, and she who brought it lied, out of love--as she afterwards wrote me on her death--bed a few years after, when I was in Sweden--out of love for me, whom she hoped to win herself. The unhappy girl had also confessed this to Ulrica, who, like me, had believed her lies, and that I had mocked and jeered at her, and said I would rather have a Lapland woman for my wife. Well, I had wooed no Laplander; but the unfortunate maiden had become Adolf's wife, and so, as Adolf's wife and the mother of two children, I found her when I returned. A third child--also a boy--was born a year after. The two older ones died in early youth; the third lived and remained the only child, and this boy was--my son!"

"Poor, poor man," murmured Gotthold.

"Ay indeed, poor man!" said old Boslaf, "for who is poorer than a man who cannot rejoice over his own child, dares not call his before all the world, what is his if anything in the world is. I dared not. Ulrica was proud; she would rather have died ten deaths than taken upon herself the shame of the violation of her marriage vow; and I was cowardly, cowardly out of love for her and him--my poor, good, unsuspicious Adolf, whom from childhood I had loved like a brother, who believed in me wholly and entirely, who would have a.s.serted against the whole world that I was his best, most faithful friend. So a few terrible years pa.s.sed away; Ulrica, exhausted by the fearful conflict between duty and love she dared not acknowledge, died; holding her cold hands, I was forced to swear that I would keep the secret. So I have been and still remain Cousin Boslaf to my child and grandchildren. They have given me a little higher place in their affections than an old servant whom people will not dismiss, tiresome as he often is; they have also let me talk when they were in a good humor; and if a child was born, old Cousin Boslaf was allowed to sit at the lower end of the table at the christening festival, or when one of them was borne to the churchyard in Rammin he was suffered to ride in the last coach, if there was a vacant seat. I have borne it all: bitternesses without number or measure; I have believed that by humility, by love towards others, I might atone for the crime I had committed against my own flesh and blood; but the curse has not been removed from me: 'I have never yet seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.' I have been no righteous man; my seed will be forced to beg their bread; I have grown so old only that I might live to see it."

"Never, never!" exclaimed Gotthold starting up; "never!"

"What will you do?" said the old man, "lend him money! What becomes of the water you take in your hand? What becomes of the money loaned to a gambler? I brought him one evening the savings of sixty years; it was no inconsiderable sum, the farm-rent of my few fields and meadows at interest and compound interest; the next morning he had not a shilling of it left. You told me just now that you were a rich man, perhaps you can give him more. He will take as much as he can get, and the moment he can obtain no more, show you the door and forbid you his house, as he did me. He knew very well I would not accuse him, that I could not; I had not required a written proof that I had given my great-granddaughter what I had."

"And Cecilia?"

"She is the true child of her ancestors; too proud to do anything but shed secret tears over the misery which has come upon her. I know those tears of old; they give the eyes which shed them at night upon lonely pillows, the fixed sad expression with which she has looked at me, whenever I have met her since--it has not been often. Where are you going so fast?"

Gotthold had started up.

"I have been here a long time already--too long."

"Is she expecting you, Gotthold?"

The old man had laid his hand upon his shoulder; Gotthold noticed how steadily the keen eyes rested upon him.

"No," he said, "I do not think she is."

"And it is better so," replied the old man. "It is enough for one to experience what I have done. When, shall I see you again?"

"I intended to go away early to-morrow morning, but I will come here from Prora."

"That's right; my child is unhappy enough now; the sooner you go the better it will be."

CHAPTER XIV.

"The better it will be," repeated Gotthold, as he strode through the dark forest. For whom--for me? My fate is decided. For her? What is it to her whether I come or go? For him? If he only wanted my money and not me, why didn't he say so long ago? I have offered it to him often enough--perhaps not plainly enough; I could not make up my mind to speak more distinctly; it seemed like trying to buy the husband's permission to remain near the wife. Why has he not wanted it? Doesn't he believe in my sincerity? Is he too proud to take it from _me_? And yet who should give to him more willingly than I? It is the only thing I can do for her. Perhaps that is all they need to make them perfectly happy; perhaps his love is of the kind that only thrives in the sunlight of prosperity, and languishes sadly in the mists of care. We will succor this feeble love. That will bring the roses back to her cheeks, and she will laugh happily again as she used to do in the old days.

I play no very brilliant part in the family drama; but when was the role of third person conspicuous or grateful? Poor, poor old man! What must he not have suffered! What must he not suffer still! But he was not guiltless, no, not guiltless! Only falsehood is sin, not truth. The marriage bond between Adolf Wenhof and Ulrica von Dahlitz, as it was brought about by a lie, was and remained a lie. She loved another, and this other came; she saw that he loved her still as he had always loved her; in an hour of intoxication, after so many years of torture, she became his; she was his wife before her own conscience; she ought also to have become so in the sight of man. It was a twofold, threefold, thousandfold lie that she did not do so, that she did not break off the old life and suffer a new one to begin that very hour! In consequence of this lie, she, the proud, beautiful woman, sank into an early grave!

He has vainly sought through all these endless years to atone for his crime--the crime of having thrust truth from his threshold and permitted falsehood to cross it! Holy genius of mankind, thou who livest in the light of truth, save me from the greatest of all sins; save me from falsehood!

A dark figure came hastily across the glade near the edge of the forest, through which the path ran. When it approached a little nearer, Gotthold recognized old Statthalter Moller, who now raised both arms, exclaiming:

"Thank G.o.d, here you are! You've given us a fine fright!"

"I? Whom? How?"

"You, to be sure, you! And whom? All of us, up to our mistress, who is perfectly beside herself! How? Well, that's a pretty question! When a man rows out to sea in such a nutsh.e.l.l of a boat, with a horrible thunderstorm rising, and that old blockhead of a Christian sees it, and thinks: Well, I'm curious to see how he gets back; but isn't at all curious, goes into the forest, and waits till the storm is over, and then about half an hour ago sends his boy to say: the boat hasn't come back yet, and may not some accident have happened to the gentleman?

Lord, there was a pretty piece of business then! And our mistress must have been very much frightened, for she came running out at once, and started us off. The mistress is not to be trifled with when she is in earnest, kind as she is; and we all got frightened too, and some have gone down to Ralow, thinking you might have been driven in there; and some to Neuhof, and I was just going to the beach-house to ask the old gentleman, who has probably come back to-day, what we should do next.

The mistress wanted to go herself, but I wouldn't let her."

"Where is the mistress?"

"She is probably still in the field," said Moller, pointing to the left; "I have just left her."

"And how long have the others been gone?"

"As long as I have; if I hurry, I shall probably overtake them."

Statthalter Moller struck into the forest on the right, shouting the names of the laborers, while Gotthold hastily walked on by the path, which in a few moments brought him to the edge of the forest, where an old beech-tree stood alone in the open field, upon which the moon shed a dim, fitful light through the rifts in the heavy black clouds. It was the rye-field, which they had been reaping that day. A loaded wagon was just starting, and men were still working around a few others, but, as it seemed to Gotthold, rather lazily; he heard the voices of the men raised in eager conversation, and saw that they were standing in little groups between the sheaves, several rows of which extended along the edge of the forest. The thought that such important work had been interrupted or carried on less zealously on his account was unpleasant to Gotthold, and he hurried towards the workmen. He had not perceived Cecilia, although he could see the whole field with tolerable distinctness; she had probably gone back to the house again.

But as he approached the beech-tree, a white figure which had been sitting with its face buried in its hands, and was now startled by his hasty steps, rose from the circular bench that surrounded the huge trunk.

"In Heaven's name, Moller, have you returned already? Is he--"

"It is I myself; Cecilia, dear, dearest Cecilia!"

"Gotthold!"

She had thrown herself into his arms; he held the pliant figure which clung closer and closer to him in an ardent embrace; her soft lips quivered against his in a long, tremulous, pa.s.sionate kiss.

"Is that you?" said Carl Brandow's voice suddenly, close beside them.

It seemed as if he had sprung from the earth; doubtless the sheaves, the last of which stood partly under the ends of the drooping boughs of the beech-tree, had concealed his approach, but in the shadow of its foliage probably nothing but Cecilia's light dress had been visible to the new-comer. Yet, in Gotthold's sensitive mood, the man's loud laugh had a horrible sound, and his clear voice a disagreeably shrill tone never heard before, as, flourishing his riding-whip in the air, according to his custom, he cried: "I have heard all; I always say: Don't turn your back, something always happens which wouldn't have occurred otherwise. I shouldn't have let you go on such a wild-goose chase, any more than I would have commenced reaping at the end next the barn. What will become of this stuff if it should begin to rain again, as there is every appearance of its doing, and rain all day to-morrow?

In that case we can take it to the manure heap, instead of the barn; n.o.body will come here with a wagon for a week, and it will have sprouted long before then."

"It isn't so bad after all, sir," said Statthalter Moller, who had just come up with the men he had overtaken in the forest. "We haven't any more room in the barn; we'll put up a cover here, and then it will be all right."

"Of course, you always know better than I!" exclaimed Brandow.

"I wanted to begin by the barn; but Hinrich Scheel wouldn't allow it, and said you yourself--"

"Oh! of course I did it myself; I'm always to blame when you idiots have done anything stupid!"