What the Swallow Sang: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER XII.

When Gotthold reached the little wooden gate, which, shaded by a half-decayed linden-tree, afforded egress through the rough hedge on this side of the garden, he paused and glanced cautiously over the sunny fields towards the forest. He could not have endured to meet any one just now, perhaps be obliged to stop and answer a greeting or question. But he saw no one; all were in the great rye-field, where they had been toiling all day; the path to the forest was open.

The sun shone with a fierce burning glow, and the heated air quivered over the wheat, which was already beginning to ripen, and whose stout stalks were unstirred by the faintest breeze; countless cicadas chirped and buzzed noisily on both sides of the narrow path that wound through the fields; a large flock of wild pigeons circled at no very great height in the air, and as they wheeled with lightning-like speed, the moving cloud glittered in the rays of the setting sun against the clear blue sky like a shield of polished steel.

Gotthold saw all this, because he was accustomed to live with nature, and even felt the electricity that pervaded the atmosphere, but only as being perfectly in harmony with the conflict that oppressed his heart. Shame had long since dried the burning tears grief had forced from his eyes; shame for having, by his want of self-control, produced this scene, in which, after eight long days of torture, he had finally played the undignified part of the third person, only to learn that she still loved this man, and her unhappiness consisted in the knowledge that she was not as much beloved by him as she desired to be. "On your honor, Gotthold, did he tell you so?" In what a despairing tone she had uttered the words! How the dread of hearing a "yes" had disfigured her beautiful face! "Is this your boasted friendship?" Yes, his friendship, with which he had been troublesome to her years before, with which he was troublesome now, only that he could no longer hide himself behind its mask as in those days, only that he no longer had the poor consolation of being able to slip away unnoticed and unperceived, as he had done that night.

He had lain here on the edge of the forest, under the great beech-tree, in the darkness of the night, and plucked up the moss, and cursed himself and the whole world because, by the pale light of the moon, he had seen two happy lovers. Now the sun glared broadly upon his couch of pain, as if it wished to show him how childish his grief had been, and that he should have reserved his despair for this hour. She had been happy! Gotthold tried to laugh, but the sound that came from his tortured breast was a cry, a dull moaning cry like that of a wounded animal. Even so had he wailed when he tottered along this very path through the sultry woods that night, and the trees danced around him in the dim moonlight like mocking spectres. Now they stood in brazen sun-steeped ranks, and seemed to say: What do we care for your self-created anguish, you fool!

And what do I care for your misery! said the sea, which, now as he emerged from the forest upon the bluff, stretched before him in a blackish-blue expanse, as if petrified in its unapproachable majesty. He had seen it under this aspect once before, one afternoon when he had been wandering along the rocky cliffs of Anacapri, and it had given him the subject for one of his best paintings; but now he only bestowed a passing thought upon it, as the memory of the cool forest shade and murmuring fountain by which he sat a short time before, flits through the burning brain of a sun-scorched wanderer on a dusty highway.

Below him in the little inlet, which had been toilsomely dug in the rocky shore, were the boats which belonged to the estate. During the last few days he had often used the smaller one to row to various places along the coast, and had the key of the chain by which it was fastened to the stake in his pocket.

Broader and broader grew the shadow which fell from the shore upon the sea and overtook Gotthold, as with powerful strokes he began to row across the wide bay, at whose extreme southern point stood the beach-house, now brightly illumined by the sunlight. But the shadow did not proceed from the shore, but a black wall of clouds which, of perfectly uniform breadth, rose slowly in the heavens, and whose sharp upper edge glowed and sparkled with a gloomy fire. It was a heavy thunderstorm from the land. Well, let it come! Gotthold longed to escape from the sultry atmosphere that brooded over his soul, and breathe freely once more in the strife of the elements. A fiery shaft quivered across the black wall of clouds, then a second, a third; and with marvellous speed the dark curtain rose higher and higher, extinguishing every gleam of light in sky and shore, and upon the sea, over which the wind now whistled in gusts, furrowing its mirror-like surface and soon lashing it into foaming surges.

Waves and wind turned Gotthold's little boat aside from its course and drove it, as if in sport, towards the sea, though now, clearly perceiving his danger, he tried to guide it to the shore. After a few strokes he realized that his only hope of deliverance was that the storm might pass as quickly as it had come.

But it seemed as if the fiends of darkness had heard his sacrilegious words and were now determined to have their victim. The black shadow spread farther and farther over the raging sea; only a few white sails still gleamed in the distant horizon, and now they also disappeared in the darkness; the waves dashed still higher, and the boat receded still faster from the shore, where already, even to Gotthold's keen eye, the white bluff and the dark forest that crowned it blended together in one gray line. There was no longer any doubt that the skiff would be driven into the open sea, unless, which might happen at any moment, some wave upset it; nay, it seemed a miracle that this had not already occurred.