Read Ebook: What the Swallow Sang: A Novel by Spielhagen Friedrich

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Ebook has 1777 lines and 105454 words, and 36 pages

"You know I was in the first class, while you were still in the second," continued the Pastor in an apologetic tone, "and had entirely forgotten that you must have known each other; but when, warned by my experience with von Pl?ggen, I mentioned you more cautiously to several others, I found a certain, what shall I term it? hostility would be unchristian, but--"

"Let us drop the subject," said Gotthold somewhat impatiently.

"Certainly, certainly," replied the Pastor, "although you will be glad to hear that I took advantage of this very opportunity to speak of your generous gift to the poor of our parish, which--"

"But why did you do that when I particularly requested that my name should not be mentioned?"

"Because it is written: 'Thou shalt not hide thy light under a bushel;' and because it was the only way to silence the injurious report that had become associated with your name."

"Injurious report?" asked Gotthold.

"Why yes, because people knew that for the last seven years, ever since your uncle's death, you have been in possession of a large fortune, and yet your father--"

"Good Heavens! what could I do," cried Gotthold, "if my father obstinately refused all my offers? but I really cannot discuss this matter any farther. Besides, it is high time for me to set out, if I wish to reach P. in good season. Has Herr Wollnow arranged everything my father left according to your wishes? Unfortunately, I could not attend to it myself, since, as you have probably learned from him, I fell sick on my journey, and was forced to remain several weeks in Milan; but I wrote to him from there to carry out the wishes of my father's successor in every respect."

"Without knowing who that successor was!" exclaimed Herr Semmel; "yes, that's the way with you artists. Well, I have not been grasping. True, there were many valuable books on theology in your father's library which I would gladly have retained, and as you gave the purchaser permission to set his own price--"

"That is all right, my dear Semmel, and now don't come a step farther."

"Only to your carriage, which I saw standing at the door of the inn."

"Not another step, I beg of you."

They were standing at the churchyard gate, which opened into the village-street; but the Pastor seemed unable to release Gotthold's hand.

"For your own comfort, and the honor of your old schoolmates, I must add one remark in connection with our former subject of conversation. All were not guilty of such uncharitableness--I may surely be permitted to give it that name without being uncharitable myself. Some of them spoke very warmly in your praise; no one more so than Carl Brandow."

"Brandow! Carl Brandow!" exclaimed Gotthold; "it is certainly--"

"Certainly only his duty, if he tries to make amends to you for an offence committed in youthful thoughtlessness by everywhere asserting the truth, and declaring that the demon of avarice is the very last that could obtain dominion over you; and if your father died as poor as he had lived, it was undoubtedly--"

"Farewell!" said Gotthold, extending his hand across the low door to the Pastor.

"May God bless and keep you!" said the Pastor. "You ought to spare another hour to spend with an old friend."

Gotthold said no more. He had withdrawn his hand with almost uncourteous haste, and was now walking rapidly down the village-street, with his hat pulled far over his brows. Herr Semmel looked after him with a contemptuous smile on his fat face.

"The enthusiast!" said he; "it seems as if the ill-luck he has had has turned his brain. But no matter. People must cling to the rich. Carl Brandow is a sly fellow. He probably knows why, from the moment he heard he was coming back, he took a new key, and cannot say enough in praise of the man whom he once abused like a reed-sparrow. Perhaps he wants to try to borrow of him. Well, he certainly needs a loan. Pl?ggen says he is making his last shifts. He will be at Pl?ggenhof to-morrow. My news will make quite an excitement."

The long village-street was empty. Here and there an old woman appeared in the doorway of one of the low straw-roofed huts, or a few half-naked children played behind the tangled hedges in the neglected gardens; every one else had gone to the fields, for this was the first day of the rye-harvest.

The village-street was empty, and the swallows had free course. Up and down they moved in their arrowlike flight, now on the ground, now rising in graceful circles, straight lines, or zig-zag course, chirping, twittering, and unweariedly fluttering their slender wings.

Gotthold paused, pushed back his hat, which he had drawn over his eyes, and gazed as if absorbed in thought at the graceful little creatures, which he had loved from his earliest childhood. While he stood watching them, the angry displeasure roused by the Pastor's words gradually yielded to a strange melancholy.

"What the swallow sang, what the swallow sang," he murmured. "Yes, yes, it echoes through the village just as it did then:--

When I went away, when I went away, I left well-filled chests behind, But returning to-day, but returning to-day, Naught I find.

"I thought I understood it--but I had only read it with my eyes, not my heart, the heart of a lonely man, who after an absence of ten years returns to the sacred scenes of his youth to find what I have found to-day--the most painful memory of that which was once mine."

Up and down flew the swallows, now close to the earth, and now in a lofty curve over a loaded harvest-wagon which had turned into the principal street from an adjoining lane, and disappeared in a barn.

"How does it go on," said Gotthold:--

Back the swallows dart, back the swallows dart, And the chests again run o'er; But an empty heart, but an empty heart, Fills no more.

He passed his hand over his eyes to brush away the tears which constantly sprang into them, while a mournful smile played around his lips.

"It would be an amusing spectacle to my Roman friends if they could see me standing here crying like a schoolboy; and what would you say, Julia? The same thing that you did when I translated the song: That is all nonsense, my dear friend. How can a heart be empty? My heart has never been empty since I knew I had one, and now it is full of love for you, as yours is for me, you German dreamer. Then you stroked the hair from my brow, and kissed me as only you can kiss. And yet, and yet! If I loved you, Julia, it was only a feeble semblance of the passion I once felt, as the pale East just gleamed with rosy light from the reflection of the sunset glow in the western sky. I have parted from you, and my heart did not quiver as it did just now when I read on her children's gravestones the name of one now dead to me."

He extended his hands as if in benediction.

"Sing on your sweet sad song, innocent swallows! Go and return, bringing Spring to the barren fields and empty human hearts! May Heaven watch over you, my dear native meadows and beloved birthplace! In spite of all, you are as sacred to me as the memories of my youth!"

The carriage was waiting at the door of the village-inn. The coachman had merely loosened the curbs on the horses' necks, that they might eat the bread chopped into little squares more easily. He now pushed aside the movable crib, hastily gave them a drink from the half-emptied pail, and when Gotthold came up was already standing with the reins in his hand beside the door, which he opened with a friendly grin.

It was the first time he had shown his passenger such an attention. They had passed over the long road across the island--Gotthold, contrary to his usual custom, absorbed in gloomy thoughts, and by no means dissatisfied with the taciturnity of the driver, who sat motionless before him, hour after hour, his broad shoulders covered with a blue linen coat, somewhat white in the seams, stooping carelessly, and smoking a short pipe, which Gotthold did not forbid, unpleasant as the sickly odor of the weed often was.

He might therefore have some reason to be surprised when, just after they had left the village and were driving slowly along between the cornfields, on the narrow by-way that led to the main road, the broad-shouldered man suddenly turned, and showing his large white teeth, said in his Platt Deutsch accent:

"Don't you know me, Herr Gotthold?"

"No," said Gotthold, laughing, as he looked into the smiling face of the driver, "but you seem to be better acquainted with me."

"I've been thinking all the way whether it was you or not," said the man; "sometimes I thought it was, and then again that it wasn't."

"You might have asked."

"Yes, you may well say so, but I didn't think of it; that would certainly have been the simplest way. Well, it don't matter now; I know you--by that!" said the driver, drawing the handle of his whip over his face to mark the course of Gotthold's scar. "You ought to have been known by it this morning, for one don't see such things every day; but it's a long time ago, and such things often happen in war; besides, with your thick beard and brown, face, you look just exactly as if you had come from Spain, where no doubt they are fighting again; but when you stopped just now in Rammin, and went up to the parsonage without even asking a question, I said at once, 'Yes, it's certainly he.'"

"And you are--you are Jochen--Jochen Prebrow!" exclaimed Gotthold, cordially extending his hand, which Jochen, turning half-round on his seat, clasped no less heartily in his huge palm.

"To be sure," said he, "and you really didn't know me."

"How could I," replied Gotthold. "You have grown so tall and stout, although indeed in this respect you have only fulfilled the promise of your boyhood."

"Yes, that's so," replied Jochen, "but my sergeant in Berlin always said it was no vice."

Jochen Prebrow turned back to his horses. He had established the identity between his stately passenger and the slender playfellow of his childhood, upon which he had been reflecting all day, and was perfectly satisfied. Gotthold too was silent; it moved him deeply to think he could have travelled nearly all day with worthy Jochen, as if he had been a total stranger.

Jochen Prebrow, the son of the Dollan blacksmith! The pleasant days again rose before him when he left P. with Curt Wenhof for the holidays, which must always be spent in Dollan, and Jochen stood on the moor where the road branched off from the highway, waiting for them, and waving his cap; Jochen, who was well aware that his good times were coming with the pair, times of catching fish and snaring birds under the care of old Cousin Boslaf, to say nothing of a thousand wild, thoughtless pranks on land and sea for which Curt always undertook to be answerable to his good-natured father.

"And the young master is dead too," said Jochen Prebrow, again turning half-round on his seat, in token that having settled the principal matter, he was now ready to proceed to details.

Gotthold nodded.

"Drowned sailing on the Spree," continued Jochen, "and yet he was skilful as any sailor, and could swim like a fish; it was very queer, but he told me that he should come to such an end some day." He filled his pipe afresh.

"When did he tell you so?"

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