What the Swallow Sang Part 7

He walked on, lost in dreams of the days that had fled and could never return, while far above his head the larks sang unceasingly, the black crows stalked over the quiet fields abandoned to Sabbath solitude, the bright-plumaged jays fluttered over the moors, and above the border of the distant woods an eagle wheeled in majestic circles. Jochen, who had taken nothing except Gotthold's dressing-case and paint-box tied up with his own little bundle in a gay cotton handkerchief, generally loitered a little behind and did not disturb his silent companion by any undue loquacity. Jochen had his own thoughts, which to be sure did not dwell upon the past but the future, thoughts he would gladly have uttered, only that he knew not how to guide the conversation in that direction. But they were approaching nearer and nearer to the corner of the woods, where he must part from Gotthold for the day, and if he wished to hear his opinion at all, now was the time. So he took heart, overtook his companion with a few long strides, walked on a few minutes by his side in silence, and was not a little startled himself when he suddenly uttered aloud the question he had mutely repeated a hundred times: "What do you think about marrying, Herr Gotthold?"

Gotthold paused and looked in astonishment at the worthy Jochen, who also stood still, and whose broad face, with its staring eyes and half-open mouth, wore so singular an expression that he could not help smiling.

"What put that into your head?"

"Because I want to get married."

"Then you must know about it far better than I, who do not."

Jochen closed his lips and swallowed several times, as if he had taken too large a mouthful. Gotthold was now forced to laugh outright.

"Why, Jochen," he exclaimed, "why are you so mysterious to an old friend? I will gladly give you my best advice, and if I can, and you care about it, my blessing also, but I must first know what the matter is really about. So you want to be married?"

"Yes, Herr Gotthold," said Jochen, taking off his cap and wiping the drops of perspiration from his brown forehead; "at least I don't exactly, but she says she has always wanted me."

"That is something, and who is she?"

"Stine Lachmund."

"But, Jochen, she is at least fifteen years older than you."

"She can't help that."

"No, certainly not."

"And then she is a capable woman, who has a good stout frame and strong bones, only it is a little hard for her to move about because she has rather too much flesh now, but she says that would probably go off if she had more work to do than she has at the Wollnows', where life is altogether too easy."

"Well, if she thinks so herself."

"Yes, and then she has put by a pretty sum of money at the Wollnows', and her old father and mother at Thiessow,--you know, Herr Gotthold, we sailed over there once with the young master, and there was a terribly high sea outside, so that we got there as wet as cats, and old Lachmund thought we must really have had a ducking."

"And then he made us a stiff gla.s.s of grog," said Gotthold.

"And our young master drank a little too much, and played all sorts of pranks in the old man's long jacket, with his sou'wester on his head--that was a jolly time, Herr Gotthold." Jochen had lost the thread of his story, but Gotthold kindly prompted him, and he now went on to relate that the old couple, rich people for their station in life, who had kept a sort of inn in the large fishing village, at last wished to resign the sceptre they had so long and obstinately held to their only daughter, and give themselves up to repose for the rest of their days, on condition that she should instantly marry some good man.

So Stine Lachmund, whom Jochen had visited in the kitchen at the same time that Gotthold had been calling upon her master and mistress, had reported, and asked Jochen whether he would be her husband.

"For you see, Herr Gotthold," continued Jochen, "she don't take to everybody, and she has known me, as one might say, all my life, and knows I am an orderly, sober man, who understands how to take care of horses, knows enough about farming, and can even manage a boat, if it doesn't blow too hard."

"Then so far everything would be perfectly suitable," said Gotthold, "but now we come to the princ.i.p.al thing: do you really love her?"

"Yes, that's just it," replied Jochen thoughtfully. "She asked me herself last night, and what was I to say?"

"The truth, Jochen, nothing but the truth."

"I did, Herr Gotthold, I did tell the truth. 'Not yet,' I said, and then she laughed and said that would do no harm, all that would come right if the woman and the man were well-behaved. I must ask you, you would give me the right advice."

"I?"

"Yes, you would know about it; you had always been a good man, and--and--"

"And?"

"And if you had married our young lady, she would have been a great deal better off than she is now; yes, and, Herr Gotthold, I only saw her side face this morning through the window, as she sat alone in the carriage; but this I must say, she doesn't look over happy, and Stine says she has not much reason to. Do you think so too, Herr Gotthold?"

"I don't know, I hope"--replied Gotthold, "people talk so much,--but we were speaking about your offer."

"Yes, and what do you say now?"

"What is there to be said? If you feel inclined, marry Stine, who is certainly a worthy, honest girl, and may you both be as happy and prosperous as you deserve."

They had seated themselves in the shade at the edge of the wood, in order to carry on this important conversation quietly, but now Gotthold rose, hastily seized his travelling case and paint-box, which Jochen had laid on the gra.s.s beside him, warmly shook the hard brown hand of his companion, and entered the forest without casting another glance behind. Jochen looked after his retreating figure, then took his own little bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and began to ascend the moor, above whose topmost crest the roof of his father's smithy was just visible.

CHAPTER VI.

Gotthold hurried restlessly through the forest with hasty steps, as if he had not a moment to lose. But it was only the tumult of sore, sorrowful thoughts, that drove him on and would not leave him, any more than the swarm of flies which had entered the woods with him and hovered about his head, now rising, now falling, now lingering behind, now flitting on before.

"To think that I must always hear it, everywhere, and from all tongues," he murmured, "as if I were responsible for it; as if it were a reproach to me that she is not happy! Happy! Who is? Perhaps the infallible people who can recite, their moral multiplication table forward and backward like this Wollnow, the wise, self-righteous Pharisee; or like good Jochen, to whom fifteen years more or less in his Stine is of no consequence, provided a good maintenance is guaranteed him. But on the other hand--am I happy? Are thousands and thousands of others, who have scarcely a greater fault than that they are men, men with hearts that feel and sympathize, suffer and compa.s.sionate? A curse upon compa.s.sion and sympathy! They make us the pitiful creatures we are. What are you rustling, venerable beeches, which for centuries have strewn your withered leaves each Autumn over the soil of this forest, only to shine forth again in Spring in the full beauty of your green foliage? What are you murmuring, little brook, as you carry your clear brown water to the sea as busily to-day as when I played upon your bank, a merry boy, and thought it a heroic deed to leap across you from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e? Alas! in the rustling, the murmur, I hear the same song that the swallow sang yesterday, the song of the eternal youth of Nature, which is ever the same, always equally strong, equally beautiful; and of the transitoriness, the frailty of men, who prolong a sorrowful, yet greedy existence by fear and hope, eat this shadowy food until death, and yet are happiest while their hearts can still hope and fear, their hearts which can never again be filled if once emptied, or if they fill and throb once more, fill with contempt, throb with indignation, that they could ever have been so foolish as to beat anxiously in blended hope and fear. Well, I no longer hope, so I need not fear even the view that awaits me yonder."

From the broader, but completely neglected road that had hitherto followed the course of the forest stream, and, turning to the right, still pursued its windings deeper into the woods to the sea, a foot-path branched off to the left and led upward, at first between the trunks of huge trees, but gradually through more and more stunted underbrush, which finally dwindled into heather and broom that covered the whole crest of the hill to its highest point, where the men of ancient times, in memory of one of their princes, had reared a huge monument of ma.s.sive blocks of stone, now covered with thick moss, and partly buried in the earth. It was the spot from which Gotthold, with an unsteady hand, had made the colored sketch he afterwards used for the painting that hung in Frau Wollnow's room.

And now he stood there again, after ten long years--in, the shadow of one of the blocks of stone which protected him from the burning rays of the sun, while before him stretched the landscape with whose wondrous beauty the boy's eyes had never been satiated. Ah! Time had not obliterated a single charm; nay, it seemed as if the hour was expressly adapted to show him the Paradise of his youth in all its magic.

The hour of noon! The brilliant sunlight bathed the tops of the beeches, over which his eyes wandered to emerald meadows and golden cornfields--the meadows and fields of Dollan, which lay like a quiet sunny Eden among the shaded, wood-covered hills that enclosed it on all sides. Amid the meadows and fields, relieved against the darker foliage of the trees in the garden, appeared the straw thatched roofs of the farm buildings, and the tiled roof of the long, low mansion-house, in whose red gable he could distinctly perceive the tiny window of the little room he had occupied with Curt whenever he went to Dollan. What memories that little window evoked! It seemed as if his eyes were fixed upon it by some magic spell, and could scarcely turn away either to the right, where the hills opened and afforded a view of the blue sea upon which the distant white sails glittered like stars, or to the left, to glance over the wide brown moorland, upon which the lonely smithy stood under an ancient oak, the only tree in the shadeless waste, above whose verge towered other wood-crowned heights which closed the view on the land side.

The hour of noon, the hour of the great Pan! Not the faintest breath stirred the shining air; motionless were the dazzling white clouds upon the steel blue vault of the heavens; motionless the tops of the trees, the blossoming bushes, even the long blades of gra.s.s. Not a sound disturbed the profound stillness; even the locust, which had chirped among the stones of the giant's monument, was silent, perhaps terrified by the brown serpent, which, with its head upraised and its round glittering eyes fixed steadily upon Gotthold, lay motionless upon one of the ma.s.ses of rock a few paces off, with the rest of its scaly body buried in a dense ma.s.s of heather. He had not noticed it before, and now perceived it with a sort of shudder. It seemed as if the torpor into which Nature had sunk had been embodied; as if the spirit of loneliness and desolation had a.s.sumed a material form. Woe betide you when the loneliness of yonder mansion with its neglected garden, the desolation of this remote valley, so far away from all human society, stares at you with those cold, cruel eyes; when you listen in the stillness for a beloved voice, and hear only the blood seething in your temples, and the heavy, anxious throbbing of your heart.

Avaunt, fiend, avaunt!

He raised his staff; the serpent disappeared; when he reached the rock upon which it must have been lying, he could see nothing but the swaying of the flowers through whose closely interwoven roots it was gliding away.

Or was it only an illusion of his excited fancy, and did the flowers bend to the soft breeze that now breathed through the hot air, growing constantly stronger and stronger, so that a rustling and murmuring arose in the forest behind him, the treetops at his feet began to whisper, and at last the cool fresh wind from the sea blew over the panting earth.

The spell was broken; Gotthold again looked at the landscape; but now with the eye of the artist, who is seeking to obtain the best view of his subject.

"I chose the morning light then, if one can call it choice; it was a mistake and I must arrange the atmospheric effect artistically, but the sun should be at a moderate height above the horizon, almost directly over the smithy; that will be about six o'clock, and I can have what I need until eight. I think it will prove a picture which might satisfy others as well as yonder talkative lady."

CHAPTER VII.

Gotthold collected his luggage; then it occurred to him that he might just as well leave his colors there. So he placed the box on the rock where the serpent had lain, in the dense shadow, and went down the hill, along the woodland path, to the long ravine through which the stream rippled to the sea, and at whose mouth, in the little inlet between two steep overhanging cliffs, stood Cousin Boslaf's lonely little house. In the old days at Dollan it had gone by the name of the beach-house, nor was the t.i.tle used only there; the name was in all mouths, especially those of the ship-masters, to whom it was a welcome landmark on that dangerous coast even by day, and still more at night, when the warning light in Cousin Boslaf's window streamed through the yawning night over the dreary waste of waters to the helpless mariner.