CHAPTER XVI.
Oswald had reached Grunwald a few hours ago. The early autumn evening was coming on apace, as he approached the old town on the turnpike--for this part of the Prussian Vendée was then not yet in possession of a railway. The high towers rose dimly like Ossian's giant bodies in the floating gray mist; mists hung low upon the meadows between the causeway and the sea, and mists hovered over the wide waters between the island and the firm land.
Oswald wrapped himself, shivering, more closely in his cloak, and fell back in the corner of the coupé. What was he to do in Grunwald? What did he want in Grunwald? He did not know it himself. Even the low trees by the wayside, bent by the northeast storms, which slipped by in wearying monotony as he drove on, did not know it; the raw-boned stage horses, dripping with wet and trotting mechanically along with drooping heads, did not know it; even the old, bearded guard, who was pulling out the list of passengers for the hundredth time, from sheer weariness, and was conning it over once more, even he did not know it. Nobody knew it, unless it was the crow, which had delayed too long in the woods and was now flying lonely and sadly above the stage-coach towards town, and vanished in the mist. And the trees danced by, more like spectres than ever; and the horses shook more impatiently the heavy collars, and the mist rolled up in closer and darker masses, and through the close and dark mist a few lights become visible; and now the coach rolls across the drawbridge, through the narrow town-gate, into the narrow, ill-paved, tortuous street, and stops before the post-office. The sudden quiet after many hours' shaking, jolting, and rattling, is indescribably sweet for one who reaches the end of his journey, but indescribably painful for him whose journey has no end, or for whom the end is not the desired goal. He would rather the jolting, shaking, and rattling should begin once more and carry him further and further away from all men into eternal night.
But he is now in a civilized city among civilized men, who have no sympathy with eccentricities of any kind, and who hold to the opinion that a gentleman who arrives in Grunwald by the express stage-coach at the appointed hour, half-past seven o'clock, is bound to give the guard a fee, to ask him respectfully to pick out from the other boxes and trunks his own trunk and hat-box, marked in legible letters with a "Doctor Stein, passenger for Grunwald," and then to send these things by a porter to the Hotel St. Petersburg. Here Doctor Stein thought he would be kindly remembered from the time when he studied and passed his examination here under the auspices of Professor Berger, and used to drink many a bottle of wine at said hotel in company with the latter; but now nobody knew him, for the old landlord had died several months ago, and the new landlord had engaged new waiters.
This had the effect that the clerk looked upon him as a stranger in the fullest sense of the word, and treated him as such, presenting to him at once the large book in which he was to enter his name. "Mr. Drostein? Thank you!... Doctor O. Stein? Ah! I beg pardon; thought it was all one name. Are you going to honor us with your presence for any length of time, sir? No? Much life in town just now: theatre, horse-fair, student's ball.... Doctor Braun? Know him very well, practices in the house since the privy councillor has been paralyzed. Was here to-day.... Where he lives? Quite near here. Post street, second house on the right, close by the privy councillor's. Are you going to order supper, sir? No appetite? sorry to hear it! Very fine fresh oysters! Natives! Anything else? water to drink? Pitcher of water? Directly, sir, you shall have it at once!"
An uncomfortable-looking room; two lighted candles on the table before the sofa; a trunk on a low trestle; a hat-box on the chair close by; all around silence, when the step of the waiter is no longer heard in the long, narrow passage. Oswald did not think the situation calculated to cheer up a melancholy man. He made haste to leave the room and the house.
It had been his first intention to call on Franz, the only one in Grunwald from whom he could be sure of receiving a hearty welcome--a friend's reception; but he soon abandoned the plan and wandered aimless and purposeless through the streets. He had never felt at home in Grunwald; but yet he had not found the town looking so utterly strange to him, even in the first days of his former residence here. Was it only the effect of his melancholy humor? Was it the dark, misty evening? He did not recognize the streets--the squares through which he used to walk so often; and when he thought he recalled one or the other feature, it was only like something seen in a dream, where we confound the near and the far chaotically in some great unknown distance. At last he found himself in one of the streets leading down to the harbor. Here he was more at home, for the harbor with its crowd of boats and ships, its smell of the sea and of tar, its monotonous sailors' songs, and its ceaseless hammering and knocking and sawing, had ever been his favorite part of the town, and the almost daily end of his walks.
But to-night everything was deserted and death-like, even in this the only lively portion of the old Hanse town, every other part of which looked as if it had been fast asleep for centuries, and was at best murmuring in a half dream something about its past glory and power. Here and there a light was visible through a cabin window, now and then a dog barked on the deck of a vessel, or a sailor's hoarse call was heard; otherwise all was silence and darkness.
He walked upon the wharf that stretched far into the sea, and along which vessel lay by vessel, out to the uttermost point. Here he stood for some time, sunk in silent meditation, and looked with folded arms out into the darkness which rested on the waters, and listened to the low, monotonous splashing of the waves which were all the time kissing and caressing the massive blocks of the breakwater. Was this his dearly-beloved sea, on which his dreams and his hopes had so often taken wings in company with countless gulls? Was this the dark abyss, in which his hopes and dreams had been irretrievably swallowed up for all eternity, like the treasure of a shipwrecked vessel?
Beyond, on the other side of the black waste of waters, lay the island, so near and yet so far off, like the time which he had spent there--the short span of time that held all he had ever known of happiness and peace in this life. A ferry-boat, which came from the island across, sailed close by the outer end of the wharf on which he was standing. He heard the measured dip of the heavy oars as they struck the waters, and the peculiar low screeching which they cause as they rub against the gunwale; he heard the confused voices of the passengers; he could even, as they came nearer, distinguish single words; he thought he heard Helen's name. Perhaps it was only an illusion, or an echo in his own heart; but it struck him with peculiar force, and all of a sudden a desire overcame him to seek out the house where, as he knew, the fair maid was staying at the time.
He went back into the town; he crossed the market-place. He stopped before the house where Berger had lived. There was no light in the windows. He could see by the light of a street-lamp that the green blinds were closed, as in a house whose owner had died. From the steeple of St. Nicholas the solemn music of a choral was heard, in which, according to an ancient custom, Grunwald bids every evening at nine o'clock farewell to the day that has gone by. Ordinarily the organist only sends four men up to sing; but on days when a citizen of distinction has been gathered to his fathers, he sends half, or the whole of the choir, according to the desire of the survivors, who wish to give an expression to their grief in this extraordinary manner. To-day all the voices were fully represented--the deceased must have been a man of very uncommon importance.
Oswald listened till the last note had died away. He thought of death, and the Great Mystery which the grave does not solve, but makes only darker, and how happy the men are, after all, who find their trust in believing in a Saviour and a Redeemer.
The long-drawn summons of the sentinel before the main-guard awaked him from his dreams. The squeaking voice of a youthful hero gave the command: "Carry arms! Ground arms! Helmets off for prayer!" Piety by order--effusions of heart, according to the paragraph of the regulations! In a well ordered state everything must go by rule.
"Why," said Oswald to himself, while he was walking towards the town-gate, "why are you not a pedant among pedants, since fate does not permit you to be a Roman among Romans? Why do you kick against the pricks to which all the cattle patiently submit? You might be as well off as the others. After all, it may not be so bad a thing to sit, as Berger used to call it, in the easy-chair of an office; the night-cap of a sinecure may protect one against many an attack of rheumatism--the effect of a draught in this windy outside world; and he who has a virtuous wife lives twice as long; and when he is compelled to die, like everybody else, they play and sing from the steeple, that the whole town hears it and prays for the peace of his soul."
Above him it rustled in the tall trees with which the street was lined that led to the suburb and to Miss Bear's boarding-school. The evening breeze has torn the dense veil of fog, and the crescent of the increasing moon was dancing through the clouds in their spectral flight. A horseman galloped past him towards town. The horse snorted; sparks flew. A moment later, and the noise was scarcely audible, and soon ceased altogether. "Somebody, I dare say, who rides for the doctor; a husband, perhaps, whose wife is taken ill; a father, whose son is lying on his death-bed." Oswald thought of the night when Bruno died, and of his fearful ride across the heath from Grenwitz to Fashwitz. If Bruno had only lived! Oswald thought everything would have happened differently then. It seemed to him as if the death of the boy alone had made him so miserably poor--as if he could have challenged a world in arms, with him by his side. With him and good fortune! no sacrifice would have been too great for Bruno's sake; not even the sacrifice of his love for Helen. He would have willingly and cheerfully given the fair girl to Bruno--but to him alone, in the world. Given? What had he to give--he the beggar?
Now he was standing before the house he had come to see, and supported himself against the iron railing of the garden. There was not a window lighted up in the whole house. The inmates had probably all retired to rest. He thought of the summer nights when he had stood looking by the hour at the open window with the curtains lowered, from which the music of a piano was wafted to him through the soft, silent air; and hours afterwards, long after the light had vanished behind the red curtains and the music had ceased, and he had still wandered up and down between the flower-beds and under the tall beech-trees, sometimes till the first purple streak of morning-dawn appeared on the eastern horizon, and the birds in the thick bushes began dreamily to twitter above him.
A breath of wind rushed through the two tall poplar-trees on both sides of the lofty portal and whispered mysteriously in the dry leaves, a window-shutter flapped in the house, a dog in a neighboring house began to bark.
Oswald shivered as if he had a fever. The momentary excitement after his long journey in the stage-coach had passed away; he felt tired and sick. He buttoned up his overcoat and turned to go back into the city. A carriage came rapidly towards him. A horseman with a lantern in his hand galloped before it--probably the same who before had galloped madly through the dark night into town.
Could it be Doctor Braun, who was going away? The thought that he might possibly not find his friend at home, awakened in Oswald the desire to see him and to talk to him. In a few minutes--for the distances in Grunwald are not considerable--he stood before the house which the waiter had told him was Doctor Braun's house. The girl who opened the door said her master was at the privy councillor's, adding that he spent all his evenings there. Here Oswald was told that Bemperlein was in the sitting-room--Bemperlein, the only one, with the exception of old Baumann, who knew his relations to Frau von Berkow--the only one whom he feared to meet; whose reproachful glance, in case he should not yet have been informed of the most recent events, must be painful to him.
He only remembered, when he was in the street again, that his going away in such a manner must have appeared extraordinary, if not ridiculous. This disturbed him and made him feel worse than before. He would have liked best to hide himself in the lowest depth of the earth; to forget in sleep the misery of life. In sleep? Why not in wine, when sleep is not to be had? "The best of life is but intoxication," says Byron; and there where a solitary lamp shines dimly between two stone pillars, is the entrance to the cellars of the old city hall. Down the long, broad staircase with the low steps, down into the bowels of the earth, where nobody cares for sentiments that make the heart heavy, and for thoughts that confuse the head!