What the Swallow Sang: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

He had so longed for Dollan when, contrary to the doctor's expectation, he recovered his consciousness after a fainting fit which, a few days after the accident on the race-course, suddenly attacked him as he sat surrounded by his friends. "Gratify the old man's wish," said the physician, "and do so quickly; he will not have many more. His days are numbered, and it is our duty to procure for him, during the few that remain, all the sunshine he misses so keenly here in the narrow crowded streets."

And with deep thankfulness the old man greeted the sunlight on his native fields. Not that he expressed his gratitude in words. He usually talked very little; but on his pale, quiet face rested an expression of the deepest peace, his mild eyes often sparkled as if with joyful memories, and a happy smile played around his lips, as he walked slowly through the sunny fields by Cecilia's side, leaning on her arm. Often too--especially in the early morning--he went out alone, and Cecilia had been anxious about him, and at last ventured to beg him to take her with him, no hour was too early for her. But the old man stroked her cheeks, and said, "Let me alone; you don't know yet."

Cecilia pondered over these strange words, and understood them for the first time when, one morning at early dawn, she looked out of her window, and saw the old man stand a long time in the garden beside one of the oldest trees--a linden, under whose shade, so the story ran, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden had sat--and then bend his white head and wave his hand, as people do when they take leave of any one. Yes, the old man was taking his leave, when he wandered alone through garden and field, forest and meadow--leave of the friends and acquaintances of his youth: here a tree, under whose branches he had dreamed of the woman he loved; yonder a rock, against whose hard breast he had once pressed his tortured young heart; the meadow where he had broken the wild steed with which he had hoped to win the beautiful Ulrica von Dahlitz; the forest whose echoes he had so often waked by the report of his good rifle. He never carried it now: the trusty gun that had formerly accompanied him in all his walks, rested quietly in the corner; he had taken leave of his faithful companion forever.

Neither did he ever turn his steps in the direction of the beach-house, and once when he had wandered through the forest by Cecilia's side, and they unexpectedly emerged from the trees upon the cliffs, he seemed almost terrified, and then shook his venerable head and muttered: "That has cost me many years, many, many years!" So saying, he made a gesture as if to imply that those years were effaced from the tablet of his memory.

Perhaps they were; he never said a word about the weary time he had lived in the beach-house, but often began to relate stories of his young days--ancient tales, which no living person knew except himself, and over which he could laugh merrily, while at other times the tears ran down his pale, withered cheeks.

Ancient tales, of which he knew every detail, every name, and Christian name, the day and hour, and even whether the weather was pleasant or rainy; but he remembered nothing of what had lately happened, or made the strangest mistakes. Thus he repeatedly called Cecilia by the name of his early love, Ulrica, and it had been a bitter grief to his great-granddaughter, that he sometimes spoke of her husband, Gretchen's father, as a man he loved and eagerly longed to see again, although he had been there very recently, until she understood that he meant Gotthold.

It had moved her strangely at first, and then when the old man recurred to it again as quietly as if it never had been and never could be otherwise, and brought her name into such close connection with that of her lover, she had accepted it like a dream, which comes between waking and sleeping, until she started in terror at the danger that lay in the vision. It must not, could not be. Why trifle with a reality which was impossible, a future that could never come to pass!

She said it with passionate vehemence, and a flood of tears, more to herself than the old man, when he again spoke of Gotthold, who stayed away too long, who left her who longed to see him, and the child who was so fond of playing with him, too much and too long alone. She told him that she dared not think of such a thing; too much, too much had happened, which separated them forever, and that though she would give her blood for him drop by drop, if it did not belong to her child and her father, she could never, never be his wife.

They were in the garden on one of the beautiful summer-like evenings of this month of October, and as she spoke the old man gazed earnestly towards the saffron-hued eastern sky, that gleamed through the brilliant foliage of the trees, which was unstirred even by the faintest breath of wind. "Yes, yes," he said, "you have suffered keenly, keenly: but"--he added after a short pause--"that is so long, so very long ago. Time heals much, much!"

He seemed to be absorbed in dreams of the days, which to him alone were no nonentity, which to him alone emerged from the river Lethe; but as his glance fell upon the tear-stained face at his side, he passed his hand over his brow and eyes, and said hastily, as if he feared he might forget it again: