"Soft veils of azure
Sank down from above.
A magic circle
Of heavenly love
Now is my life,"
these were the words that the bridegroom had written on the bescribbled page in his study in the vicarage. Everything was ready and Fränzchen softly laid her hand on Hans' shoulder, glanced smilingly at the paper in front of him and led him out of the house to her favorite spot on the seashore.
It was a height where, between stones and the shifting sands of the dunes, low bushes and a few taller trees, curiously torn by the wind, struggled with laborious persistency to wring their existence from the hard soil, to defend it against the drifting sand and the storms. It was a lonely spot where one could hold communion with land and sea, with the clouds and gulls, with one's own thoughts. There Grips had built Fränzchen a simple seat and there, on the eve of the wedding, sat Hans Unwirrsch and Franziska Götz and spoke of their own fate and of Kleophea and watched the sun go down.
They spoke much of Kleophea while they looked at the sea above which the fog had closed in after the beautiful brilliant day. Poor Kleophea had entirely disappeared; no answer had come to any of the letters that Fränzchen had written in the course of the year. They knew nothing of her—it was so strange that just on this evening her image should keep ever rising before them anew, that their thoughts would not remain centred on their own happiness. Hans and Franziska did not know that the ship that bore Kleophea Stein was gliding along behind the gray fog that was rising on the waves. They did not know that Kleophea was at sea when, on the following day Pastor Josias Tillenius joined their hands for time and eternity!
On the eighth of September the sun would not come out from behind the clouds all day. On the evening before it had gone down, as the sea-folk say, "in a bag" and that meant dull weather for the next few days. It was a sultry day on which not a breath of air stirred, on which the same sad gray covered heaven and earth, on which one might have wished for a heavy shower if it had not been a wedding day.
It did not rain on Fränzchen's bridal wreath, it did not rain on Pastor Tillenius's excellent words, it did not rain on the grim emotion of Uncle Rudolf and Colonel von Bullau, it did not rain on the jubilance of the mansion and the village of Grunzenow. Johannes Unwirrsch and Franziska Götz gave each other their hands as they had already given each other their hearts; after the pastor's address Lieutenant Götz made a speech at the table and, following the peal of the organ and the sexton's cantata, came the musicians from Freudenstadt whom Colonel von Bullau had had fetched in a farm wagon to play merry dance music. The Colonel entertained the whole village in his castle and as Major domus and arbiter elegantiarum Grips did not show himself as he was but as what he could be: amiable, obliging, tender toward the fair, courteous toward the strong sex.
They danced in the great hall and there was endless applause when the Colonel opened the ball with the young bride. It was a pleasure to look into the Lieutenant's radiant eyes; it was a pleasure to watch Pastor Josias Tillenius talking to Mother Jörenson; and it was a particular pleasure to see how the Assistant Pastor and bridegroom Hans Unwirrsch fell a victim to the dizzy goddess Terpsichore and to use an expression of the experienced seamen who were present, "lurched and pitched" through the room. The oldest people, even the great-grandmother Margarethe Jörenson could not remember another such day; the enjoyment rose from moment to moment and carried old and young with it; half confused the bridal couple that with difficulty had found refuge in a quiet corner, looked at the tumult.
"Fire at sea!" Who shouted that? Where had that cry come from?
"Fire at sea! Fire at sea!"—the words went through the festive throng like an electric shock. The music broke off, the dancers stopped as if spellbound; those who were at the refreshment tables sprang from their chairs and the Malayan song that the old one-armed first boatswain Stephen Groote was singing to a small appreciative circle, was smothered in his throat.
Hans and Fränzchen too had jumped up although at first they did not grasp the reason of the panic-like fear. The Colonel pushed his way through the room towards the door followed by the majority of his male guests. Those who remained behind ran about excitedly or to the windows that looked out on the sea. Franziska seized Pastor Tillenius's arm.