The Undying Past

by Hermann Sudermann

The hours went by in sacred expectation. Soon after the vesper coffee, she slipped out with the key of the bathing-house in her pocket The wind swept across the wide meadow flats, and above her the sun, blood-red, was half hidden by a ragged fringe of stormy clouds. The grassy path had been saturated by the rain, and more than once her feet stuck fast in the boggy ground, which oozed and gurgled as she set them free. But, without looking back, she hurried on. Like a phantasmagoria the rich half-submerged pastures melted behind her. The tall sheaves bent before the wind; all the flowers which in the past summer days had made so fair a border to the meadow path, lay on the ground broken and smirched in a liquid mêlée.

As she came in sight of the shining surface of the stream stretching into the distance, she started, for to-day it was swollen to twice its usual breadth, and the current much swifter. The heavy rains of the last few days were responsible. The boats had been drawn up almost on to the top of the dyke, and water was hissing from the foot of the reeds along which one could generally walk with tolerably dry feet. It was uncanny to hear the dry dark heads of the bulrushes, whipped by wind and wet, sighing and rattling as they struck against each other. For a moment she had almost a mind to retire from the foolhardy enterprise. But the next her old daring defiance took possession of her anew.

"If I am in earnest about my vow," she said to herself, "no bodily danger should stand in my way."

She loosened the chain of the boat, which slid down the declivity of the dyke nearly of its own accord. In the bathing-house she found the right oars, and put off into the stream.

Now a desperate struggle began, even before she had got clear of the reeds; the current caught the little craft and drove it into the thickest part of the sedge, so that the keel was set as fast on unbroken rushes as on a sandbank. Here it was impossible to strike out with the oars, and only by pushing herself off with her hands from one clump of bulrushes to another did she at length get into open water. The boat was instantly caught by a couple of eddies and spun round in a circle. Clenching her teeth, Hertha steered herself with the handle of the oar. Her chest expanded, the blood hammered in her veins, a feverish vapour swam before her eyes. With every stroke of the oars she felt a portion of her life's strength flow out. But what did it matter? The boat was being mastered; it was making progress.

And by degrees the tumult in her blood subsided; the muscles, instead of slackening, became hard as steel. She dared look round and measure the distance she had come. The Isle of Friendship greeted her with its masses of golden-brown foliage, from which whirled swarms of falling leaves. A cry of hopeful longing escaped her breast; but she must look out, or another eddy would catch the boat. Ten minutes might have passed, when two withered leaves fluttered over her head and sank like tired birds of passage swimming on to the water.

She gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, for she knew that these leaves were envoys that the Isle of Friendship had sent to meet her. And now when she looked round she found that she was within the shadow of its willows.

One more bitter fight with the current, and with a last far-reaching stroke of the oars she shot into the little bay, whose sandy landing-place was quite under water, so that the boat was able to drift right in amongst the alder roots. With a rapid movement she slung the chain round the strongest of the stumps, fastened it firmly, and swung herself, by clinging to an overhanging branch, on to the steep slippery bank.

For a moment she crouched down on the drenched grass to recover breath, and looked at her blistered palms, which were bleeding. She wiped the blood away with her tongue, and laughed. Then she threw a frightened glance into the thicket where ruddy sunlight lay on the yellow leaves.

The brook which ran down to the river tossed dirty grey rainwater over the slimy stones, between which were heaped stacks of dead damp leaves. The tongues of fern growing along the edge of the water were nipped and shrivelled up, and they looked as they stood there like little wrinkled old women in their blurred brown rags. Not far off were a greasy company of toadstools spreading their smooth copula-shaped heads, delicately fluted underneath. They shone as if they had been rolling in butter.