CHAPTER XXVIII.
There come days in our lives which we afterwards remember as some blessed dream which knows nothing of earthly sufferings or earthly restrictions, in which we soar as on the pinions of eagles, strong and high above all the little pitiful obstacles that otherwise so lamentably hamper our feet.
Of such dream-like beauty was the day on which I took the most memorable journey of my life: a wonderful summer day, whose glorious brightness was not marred by the smallest cloud, and yet palpitating in a mild balmy air that played around my cheeks and brow, while the train whirled in rattling speed through the lovely Thüringian country. It was the first journey I had made in my life, at least the first that was not a business trip, and the first also that took me from my northern home into the sunny plains of Middle Germany. The novelty of the scenery probably helped to make everything appear to me doubly graceful and lovely: I could not satiate myself with gazing at the soft undulating lines of the hills; at the sharply-defined crags whose summits were crowned with ruined fortresses and ancient keeps, and whose feet were laved by the clear water of winding rivers; at the flowing meadow-lands in which lines of trees with foliage of brightest green marked the courses of the streams; at the cities and towns that lay so peacefully in the valley, and at the little villages that nestled so cosily among the trees. It was not Sunday, but all these things wore a Sunday look, even the men who were working alone in the fields and stopped to look as the train rushed by, or those gathered in the neat stations where we stopped. It was as if everybody was travelling only for pleasure, and that even taking farewell was not painful on such a lovely day. And then the meetings of friends--the happy faces, the hand-shaking and kissing and embracing! Every one of these scenes I watched with the liveliest interest, and always with a feeling of emotion, as if I had a portion in it myself.
Thus I arrived in the afternoon at E., where I quitted the railroad and engaged a carriage from a number that were at the station to take me the remaining distance. We soon left the level land and entered a valley through which the road to "the forest" ran in many windings between hills on either side. The journey lasted several hours, and the sun was already declining as we slowly toiled up a mountain the steepest of all, "but the last," said the driver. We had both descended and were walking on either side the large and powerful horses, and keeping the flies off them with pine branches.
"Woa!" cried the driver; the horses stopped.
We had reached the summit, and stopped to let the horses blow a little.
"That is our pride," said the man, as I looked with astonishment at a primeval and gigantic oak which grew here in an open space in the heart of the pine forest, and spread its gnarled and weather-beaten boughs far up against the blue sky.
"That is a great curiosity," he went on. "People come from miles and miles to see that tree; and it has been painted I don't know how often. Not many days ago a young lady, who has been staying with us a few weeks, came here and made a picture of it. I drove her here myself; I often drive her about."
Absorbed in my own thoughts hitherto, I had, contrary to my usual custom, spoken but little with the man, and indeed scarcely noticed him, and now it seemed as if he and I were old acquaintances, and had the most intimate interests in common. I asked him the young lady's name; not that I had any doubt that it was Paula, and yet it was a sort of shock to me when he pronounced it, and from his lips it sounded strangely. And now the man, who seemed to have been awaiting his opportunity, became very communicative, and told me, while we crossed the back of the mountain and descended in a rattling trot, a multitude of things about the charming young lady; and the old lady her mother, who was blind, but who recognized people at once by the voice; and about the old man, with the hooked nose and long gray moustache and curly white hair, who was really only their servant, but the ladies treated him as one of themselves; and yesterday a young gentleman had arrived, with a sunburnt face and bright brown eyes and long brown hair, who was the young lady's brother, and a painter too.
The carriage was clattering over the rough pavement of the little town, and the talkative fellow was still chattering about Paula and the rest. I had told him that I had come on purpose to see that lady, and that he must put me down at the inn at which he told me she was staying.
The carriage stopped. The head-waiter with two small myrmidons rushed out; two boys who saw a chance of their services being called into requisition as guides came up to have a look at the strange gentleman. Concealing my agitation, I asked the head-waiter if I could have a room, and if either of the guests was at home.
I could have a room, he said, but neither of the guests was at home: the lady and the young gentleman had gone out for a walk, and the young lady had started for the mountains with Herr Süssmilch early in the afternoon: she went into the mountains every afternoon: she painted up there, and hardly ever came back until after sundown.
"Do you know the place?"
"Certainly; perfectly well: this boy here has carried the lady's things there often enough. Say, Carl, you know where the lady goes to paint?"
"To be sure," said the boy. "Shall I take the gentleman there?"
"Yes," I said, and turned to start at once.
"You need not be in any hurry, sir," the attentive headwaiter called after me; "you will reach the place in half an hour."
My little guide ran on ahead, and I followed him along the main street of the little town, planted with lindens, with groups of travellers seated here and there before the doors, and reached the fields upon which still lay the golden evening light, and then entered the cool twilight of the woods. We pursued the wide road which ascended the mountains by a steep acclivity for the most part, but occasionally ran along small level glades, and was elsewhere inclosed on both sides by the tall forest trees. It was wonderfully quiet in the cool pines: no breeze stirred, scarcely was the silence broken at rare intervals by the chirp of a bird: the blue sky looked down from above, and I felt as if the path climbed up to heaven.
No one met us on the way; only when we were almost at the summit and had turned to the right from the main road into the wood and reached an open space where stood a sort of hunting-lodge, I saw a couple of men who were sitting upon benches with mugs of beer in their hands. Out of the wood, directly opposite the spot at which we had entered the clearing, came a man followed by a boy carrying an easel and other painter's apparatus. I recognized the sergeant at once; and my little guide said that the boy who was carrying the things was his brother Hans, and that they were coming from the place where the lady used to paint. This place was only five minutes walk distant, and we had only to follow the way by which the sergeant and Hans had just come.
My old friend, who was talking in a rather animated manner to the boy, who probably was not carrying the things carefully enough to please him, had not observed me, and I was glad of it, for I felt that I was not in a frame of mind to talk with him. So I gave my guide a sign to wait for me; and crossed the clearing towards the path he had pointed out.
It was a broad path, overgrown with short green grass upon which the foot fell noiselessly, and the pines on both sides were of such growth that their branches almost entirely roofed it in, so that only here and there the red sunset glow pierced to the green twilight. It gradually but continually ascended, and I walked on, not even conscious that I was walking or moving my limbs, as one ascends heights in a dream. A breathless expectation, a joyful fear possessed me wholly. Thus might an immortal spirit feel which is about to enter the presence of its judge, and with all its timid hesitation, knows still that this judge is mercy itself.
And now it grew lighter and more open with every step, and I passed out of the forest upon the crest of the mountain, which to my right hand rose to a mighty height, while westwardly, to the left, it sloped away to a deep valley, over which I could see far-distant mountain terraces rising slope above purple slope, against the evening sky. The sun had set, but its radiance still lay calm upon the light clouds which floated over the mountain, and a few paces from me, bathed in the roseate light reflected from the clouds, stood a female figure by a mossy rock upon which she leaned her right arm, while her left hand with her broad straw hat hung idly by her side. She was looking fixedly at the sunset sky, and her features were clearly defined against the bright background. Thus I saw her once more.
But she neither saw me nor heard me, for the soft grass muffled my steps. I wished to call her by name, but could not; and now she slowly turned her face towards me and looked at me with wide fixed eyes and unmoving features, as though I were an apparition which she had long yearned to behold, and which the might of her longings had summoned before her. But as I spread my arms, saying, "Paula, dearest Paula!" a heavenly light flashed into her lovely face, a faint cry broke from her lips, and she lay upon my breast with a storm of passionate tears, as if all the sorrows she had borne all these long years had burst forth in one moment.
What I said, what she said, while we stood on the mountain ridge, while streak after streak of the rosy light faded out of the sky, I cannot now recall.
And then we went back hand in hand through the silent wood, by another way than that by which I had come; a way that at first led over a grassy slope directly down the mountain, so that we could still see the valley in the faint evening light, and then under high beeches where it was quite dark, so that Paula held firmly to my hand until we came upon open spaces and the valley lay before us again, now dim in gray twilight, so that I thought the descent must be longer than the ascent, and yet it was so short--so short! What did it matter? I knew that with her who was leading me down the dim mountain path I would walk henceforth hand-in-hand so long as we both lived upon earth; and an inward prayer rose in my soul that her last day might be mine also.
And now I see ourselves--that is our mother, Paula, Oscar and myself--seated at a table in one of the arbors in front of the inn, and the light of the lamp in its glass shade falls mildly on the gentle features of the blind lady who from time to time lays her soft hand upon mine, and on Paula's dear face that beams with a lovely radiance from her inward happiness, and upon the beautiful young features of Oscar, whose dark eyes glow while he tells how a young English nobleman whose acquaintance he made at Rome has given him a grand commission to paint a series of frescoes in his castle in the Highlands, and how before he sets out there, he had to come after his sister to get some advice from her; and then the youth tosses back his long hair, and lifts a full glass and drinks it off to our health, and the mother smiles gently upon us, and as our glasses clink together there appears in an opening in the trellis that head with the gray moustache and white hair which played so important a part in the history of art.
Then I am standing at the open window of my room, listening to the rustling of the west wind in the branches and the plashing of the fountain before the inn, and my gaze is fixed upon a star that beams brighter than all the rest in the nightly sky.
And the old sadness awakens once more in my heart, and my eyes fill with tears.
But when I look again, the star is beaming more brightly than ever, as if it were an eye looking lovingly down and sending me greeting from the abodes of the blest.