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.