Part 1 (1/2)

What the Swallow Sang.

by Friedrich Spielhagen.

CHAPTER I.

”I won't give you any farther trouble, I can find what I want myself.”

The s.e.xton's wife looked at the gentleman in some little surprise, and then glanced at the bunch of huge keys which hung in the door she had just opened for the stranger.

”That's right; you need not be uneasy, I shall not stay long, and here is something for your trouble.”

He pressed a piece of money into her hand, and turned towards the door.

”The Herr Pastor has strictly forbidden it,” said the woman.

”He will have no objection,” replied the stranger. ”I will leave a few words for him.”

He took his note-book and wrote a few lines. When he tore out the leaf he perceived on the other side a little sketch which he had dashed off that afternoon with a few hasty strokes, while his carriage stopped before a village inn.

A smile flitted over his grave features.

”That won't do,” he murmured. ”And here again, everything is filled with scrawls. Well,” he added aloud, as he thrust the note-book back into his pocket, ”I will write from P----. Please tell him so; farewell, my good woman.”

The s.e.xton's wife did not venture to make any reply, and turned away.

The stranger looked after her retreating figure a few minutes.

”Strange,” he murmured, ”it seems as if it would be committing a sacrilege to utter my name aloud in this place! It was really a relief to my mind that the woman did not know me. How we are all under the ban of gloomy feelings which we should be ashamed to confess to others! To be sure it is not strange that these emotions should almost overpower me here; here, in this spot which should be my home, where my cradle stood, and yet where I was not allowed to return until the grave had closed over him to whom I owe my life.”

He had taken a few noiseless steps within the church, and now pausing, gazed around the narrow s.p.a.ce. The sun, already low in the horizon, cast through the round, leaden-cased panes of the lofty narrow windows a mysterious light, which brightened or faded as the soft breeze raised or lowered the branches of the ancient linden-trees outside the walls.

And thus, now clear now dim, but always sorrowful, the memories of his early years swept through the stranger's mind as he stood motionless, his eyes wandering over the ma.s.sive white-washed walls, the few dusky pictures hung here and there at far too great a height, the little oaken font black with age, the altar with its two large bra.s.s sconces, and the pulpit, whose desk was covered with a tattered cloth.

Everything was just as it used to be; he even remembered the holes in the cover, only it was all very much smaller, more poverty-stricken and tasteless than memory had pictured it. Yet this was the most favorable light,--what must it be in the broad glare of day! And his gloomy, sorrowful childhood,--what was it when he extinguished the magical light of memory, when he saw it as it really was, as a cold fanatical father had made it to the child so early bereft of a mother's love.

The traveller started from his revery as a sharp sound suddenly echoed through the quiet church as if something had burst asunder. It was the clock, which had just begun to strike. He pa.s.sed his hand over his brow, mechanically counted the strokes and listened to the rumbling echo till the last sound died away. ”Seven o' clock,” said he; ”it is time for me to set out again.”

He walked around behind the benches, up a side aisle, on the right of the pulpit, until he reached the large iron door of the crypt. It was fastened, but on both sides, affixed to the wall, were the mural tablets of the pastors of Rammin, who had preached the gospel over the coffins of their predecessors whom they were some day to join. He went to the last stone and read the inscription, that here rested in G.o.d, Gotthold Ephraim Weber, D.D., installed in 1805 as Pastor of St. Mary's church in Rammin, born August 3d, 1780, died June 15th, 1833.

”Gotthold Ephraim Weber,” murmured the stranger, ”that is my name too, and I am also a Doctor of Theology. That I would not remain where my father placed me, but insisted upon taking the profession for which, according to my best knowledge and belief, I was born, separated him who now lies here from me forever. No, no, not that, at least that was not the true cause! I never understood in your sense what is written here: 'Blessed are those who die in the Lord.' We were never one, had been separated long before we parted. Well, father, at least let there be peace between us now. I wish with all my heart that you may have the bliss in which you believed; and say: 'blessed are the--dead,' so you certainly have the happiness in which I believe.”

Gotthold made a gesture like one who holds out his hand in reconciliation. ”Let us have peace now,” he repeated.

A little bird, which had perched for a moment in one of the openings above the window, twittered so loudly that the sweet clear tones filled the silent empty church.

”I will take it as an answer,” said Gotthold.

He left the building as slowly as he had entered it, and went down the broad path in the churchyard to a spot where, at a large iron cross, which also bore the inscription, ”Blessed are those who die in the Lord,” a narrow walk branched off towards the wall. Scarcely anything had been altered in this older portion of the cemetery; he still remembered every mound, every cross, every stone, and every epitaph; there at last was what he was seeking--the grave with the low wooden railing, the stunted weeping willow, the little slanting cross, neglected as ever, or perhaps even more so--his mother's grave.

He had lost her so very young, when he was only four or five years old, that he had scarcely the faintest shadow of personal remembrance; he had never seen a picture of her, and his father only mentioned her name when he said angrily: ”You are just like your mother,” yet perhaps for this very reason his fancy had always busied itself very frequently with this dead mother, who had been like him, and would certainly have loved him as he loved her dear shadow, until it almost a.s.sumed a bodily form. A dear, dream-like form, which came unbidden, and disappeared when he would so gladly have detained it longer.

He plucked a few leaves from the willow, but scattered them over the grave again.