THE ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH IN RÜGEN
BY
THE AUTHOR OF "ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN"
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1904
[Illustration: map of Rügen]
CONTENTS
THE FIRST DAY--From Miltzow to Lauterbach
THE SECOND DAY--Lauterbach and Vilm
THE THIRD DAY--From Lauterbach to Göhren
THE FOURTH DAY--From Göhren to Thiessow
THE FOURTH DAY (continued)--At Thiessow
THE FIFTH DAY--From Thiessow to Sellin
THE FIFTH DAY (continued)--From Sellin to Binz
THE SIXTH DAY--The Jagdschloss
THE SIXTH DAY (continued)--The Granitz Woods, Schwarze See, and Kieköwer
THE SEVENTH DAY--From Binz to Stubbenkammer
THE SEVENTH DAY (continued)--At Stubbenkammer
THE EIGHTH DAY--From Stubbenkammer to Glowe
THE NINTH DAY--From Glowe to Wiek
THE TENTH DAY--From Wiek to Hiddensee
THE ELEVENTH DAY--From Wiek Home
THE ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH IN RÜGEN
THE FIRST DAY
FROM MILTZOW TO LAUTERBACH
Every one who has been to school and still remembers what he was taught
there, knows that Rügen is the biggest island Germany possesses, and
that it lies in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Pomerania.
Round this island I wished to walk this summer, but no one would walk
with me. It is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the
life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on
anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a
thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside. If you
drive you are bound by a variety of considerations, eight of the most
important being the horses' legs. If you bicycle--but who that loves to
get close to nature would bicycle? And as for motors, the object of a
journey like mine was not the getting to a place but the going there.
Successively did I invite the most likely of my women friends, numbering
at least a dozen, to walk with me. They one and all replied that it
would make them tired and that it would be dull; and when I tried to
remove the first objection by telling them how excellent it would be for
the German nation, especially those portions of it that are still to
come, if its women walked round Rügen more often, they stared and
smiled; and when I tried to remove the second by explaining that by our
own spirits are we deified, they stared and smiled more than ever.
Walking, then, was out of the question, for I could not walk alone. The
grim monster Conventionality whose iron claws are for ever on my
shoulder, for ever pulling me back from the harmless and the wholesome,
put a stop to that even if I had not been afraid of tramps, which I was.
So I drove, and it was round Rügen that I drove because one hot
afternoon when I was idling in the library, not reading but fingering
the books, taking out first one and then another, dipping into them,
deciding which I would read next, I came across Marianne North's
_Recollections of a Happy Life_, and hit upon the page where she begins
to talk of Rügen. Immediately interested--for is not Rügen nearer to me
than any other island?--I became absorbed in her description of the
bathing near a place called Putbus, of the deliciousness of it in a
sandy cove where the water was always calm, and of how you floated about
on its crystal surface, and beautiful jelly-fish, stars of purest
colours, floated with you. I threw down the book to ransack the shelves
for a guide to Rügen. On the first page of the first one I found was
this remarkable paragraph:--
'Hearest thou the name Rügen, so doth a wondrous spell come over thee.
Before thine eyes it rises as a dream of far-away, beauteous fairylands.
Images and figures of long ago beckon thee across to the marvellous
places where in grey prehistoric times they dwelt, and on which they
have left the shadow of their presence. And in thee stirs a mighty
desire to wander over the glorious, legend-surrounded island. Cord up,
then, thy light bundle, take to heart Shylock's advice to put money in
thy purse, and follow me without fear of the threatening sea-sickness
which may overtake thee on the short crossing, for it has never yet done
any one more harm than imposing on him a rapidly-passing discomfort.'
This seemed to me very irresistible. Surely a place that inspired such a
mingling of the lofty and the homely in its guide-books must be well
worth seeing? There was a drought just then going on at home. My eyes
were hot with watching a garden parch browner day by day beneath a sky
of brass. I felt that it only needed a little energy, and in a few hours
I too might be floating among those jelly-fish, in the shadow of the
cliffs of the legend-surrounded island. And even better than being
surrounded by legends those breathless days would it be to have the sea
all round me. Such a sea too! Did I not know it? Did I not know its
singular limpidity? The divineness of its blue where it was deep, the
clearness of its green where it was shallow, lying tideless along its
amber shores? The very words made me thirsty--amber shores; lazy waves
lapping them slowly; vast spaces for the eye to wander over; rocks, and
seaweed, and cool, gorgeous jelly-fish. The very map at the beginning of
the guide-book made me thirsty, the land was so succulently green, the
sea all round so bland a blue. And what a fascinating island it is on
the map--an island of twists and curves and inland seas called Bodden;
of lakes, and woods, and frequent ferries; with lesser islands dotted
about its coasts; with bays innumerable stretching their arms out into
the water; and with one huge forest, evidently magnificent, running
nearly the whole length of the east coast, following its curves, dipping
down to the sea in places, and in others climbing up chalk cliffs to
crown them with the peculiar splendour of beeches.
It does not take me long to make up my mind, still less to cord up my
light bundle, for somebody else does that; and I think it was only two
days after I first found Marianne North and the guide-book that my maid
Gertrud and I got out of a suffocating train into the freshness that
blows round ryefields near the sea, and began our journey into the
unknown.
It was a little wayside station on the line between Berlin and
Stralsund, called Miltzow, a solitary red building on the edge of a
pine-wood, that witnessed the beginning of our tour. The carriage had
been sent on the day before, and round it, on our arrival, stood the
station authorities in an interested group. The stationmaster,
everywhere in Germany an elaborate, Olympic person in white gloves,
actually helped the porter to cord on my hold-all with his own hands,
and they both lingered over it as if loth to let us go. Evidently the
coachman had told them what I was going to do, and I suppose such an
enterprising woman does not get out at Miltzow every day. They packed us
in with the greatest care, with so much care that I thought they would
never have done. My hold-all was the biggest piece of luggage, and they
corded it on in an upright position at our feet. I had left the choosing
of its contents to Gertrud, only exhorting her, besides my pillow, to
take a sufficiency of soap and dressing-gowns. Gertrud's luggage was
placed by the porter on her lap. It was almost too modest. It was one
small black bag, and a great part of its inside must, I knew, be taken
up by the stockings she had brought to knit and the needles she did it
with; yet she looked quite as respectable the day we came home as she
did the day we started, and every bit as clean. My dressing-case was put
on the box, and on top of it was a brown cardboard hat-box containing
the coachman's wet-weather hat. A thick coat for possible cold days made
a cushion for my back, and Gertrud's waterproof did the same thing for
hers. Wedged in between us was the tea-basket, rattling inharmoniously,
but preventing our slipping together in sloping places. Behind us in the
hood were the umbrellas, rugs, guide-books, and maps, besides one of
those round shiny yellow wooden band-boxes into which every decent
German woman puts her best hat. This luggage, and some mysterious
bundles on the box that the coachman thought were hidden by his legs but
which bulged out unhideable on either side, prevented our looking
elegant; but I did not want to look elegant, and I had gathered from the
remarks of those who had refused to walk that Rügen was not a place
where I should meet any one who did.
Now I suppose I could talk for a week and yet give no idea whatever of
the exultation that filled my soul as I gazed on these arrangements. The
picnic-like simplicity of them was so full of promise. It was as though
I were going back to the very morning of life, to those fresh years when
shepherd boys and others shout round one for no reason except that they
are out of doors and alive. Also, during the years that have come after,
years that may properly be called riper, it has been a conviction of
mine that there is nothing so absolutely bracing for the soul as the
frequent turning of one's back on duties. This was exactly what I was
doing; and oh ye rigid female martyrs on the rack of daily
exemplariness, ye unquestioning patient followers of paths that have
been pointed out, if only you knew the wholesome joys of sometimes being
less good!
The point at which we were is the nearest from which Rügen can be
reached by persons coming up from the south and going to drive. No one
ever gets out there who is bound for Rügen, because no one ever drives
to Rügen. The ordinary tourist, almost exclusively German, goes first to
Stralsund, is taken across the narrow strip of water, train and all, on
the steam ferry, and continues without changing till he reaches the open
sea on the other side of the island at Sassnitz. Or he goes by train
from Berlin to Stettin and then by steamer down the Oder, crosses the
open sea for four hours, and arrives, probably pensive for the boats are
small and the waves are often big, at Göhren, the first stopping-place
on the island's east coast.
We were not ordinary tourists, and having got to Miltzow were to be
independent of all such wearinesses as trains and steamers till the day
we wanted to come back again. From Miltzow we were going to drive to a
ferry three miles off at a place called Stahlbrode, cross the mile of
water, land on the island's south shore, and go on at once that
afternoon to the jelly-fish of Miss North's Putbus, which were beckoning
me across to the legend-surrounded island far more irresistibly than any
of those grey figures the guide-book talked about.
The carriage was a light one of the victoria genus with a hood; the
horses were a pair esteemed at home for their meekness; the coachman,
August, was a youth who had never yet driven straight on for an
indefinite period without turning round once, and he looked as though he
thought he were going to enjoy himself. I was sure I was going to enjoy
myself. Gertrud, I fancy, was without these illusions; but she is old,
and has got out of the habit of being anything but resigned. She was the
sop on this occasion thrown to the Grim One of the iron claws, for I
would far rather have gone alone. But Gertrud is very silent; to go with
her would be as nearly like being alone as it is possible to be when you
are not. She could, I knew, be trusted to sit by my side knitting,
however bumpy the road, and not opening her lips unless asked a
question. Admirable virtue of silence, most precious, because most rare,
jewel in the crown of female excellences, not possessed by a single one
of those who had refused to walk! If either of them had occupied
Gertrud's place and driven with me would she not, after the way of
women, have spent the first half of the time telling me her secrets and
the other half being angry with me because I knew them? And then
Gertrud, after having kept quiet all day, would burst into activities at
night, unpack the hold-all, produce pleasant things like slippers, see
that my bed was as I like it, and end by tucking me up in it and going
away on tiptoe with her customary quaint benediction, bestowed on me
every night at bedtime: 'The dear God protect and bless the gracious
one,' says Gertrud as she blows out the candle.
'And may He also protect and bless thee,' I reply; and could as ill
spare my pillow as her blessing.
It was half-past two in the afternoon of the middle Friday in July when
we left the station officials to go back to their dull work and trotted
round the corner into the wide world. The sky was a hot blue. The road
wound with gentle ups and downs between fields whitening to harvest.
High over our heads the larks quivered in the light, shaking out that
rapturous song that I can never hear without a throb of gratitude for
being alive. There were no woods or hills, and we could see a long way
on either side, see the red roofs of farms clustered wherever there was
a hollow to protect them from the wild winds of winter, see the straight
double line of trees where the high road to Stralsund cut across ours,
see a little village a mile ahead of us with a venerable church on a
mound in the middle of it gravely presiding over the surrounding wide
parish of corn. I think I must have got out at least six times during
the short drive between Miltzow and the ferry pretending I wanted
flowers, but really to enjoy the delight of loitering. The rye was full
of chickory and poppies, the ditches along the road where the spring
dampness still lingered were white with the delicate loveliness of
cow-parsley, that most spiritual of weeds. I picked an armful of it to
hold up against the blue of the sky while we were driving; I gave
Gertrud a bunch of poppies for which she thanked me without enthusiasm;
I put little posies of chickory at the horses' ears; in fact I felt and
behaved as if I were fifteen and out for my first summer holiday. But
what did it matter? There was nobody there to see.
Stahlbrode is the most innocent-looking place--a small cluster of
cottages on grass that goes down to the water. It was quite empty and
silent. It has a long narrow wooden jetty running across the marshy
shore to the ferry, and moored to the end of this jetty lay a big
fishing-smack with furled brown sails. I got out and walked down to it
to see if it were the ferry-boat, and whether the ferryman was in it.
Both August and the horses had an alarmed, pricked-up expression as they
saw me going out into the jaws of the sea. Even the emotionless Gertrud
put away her stocking and stood by the side of the carriage watching me.
The jetty was roughly put together, and so narrow that the carriage
would only just fit in. A slight wooden rail was all the protection
provided; but the water was not deep, and heaved limpidly over the
yellow sand at the bottom. The shore we were on was flat and vividly
green, the shore of Rügen opposite was flat and vividly green; the sea
between was a lovely, sparkling blue; the sky was strewn across with
loose clusters of pearly clouds; the breeze that had played so gently
among the ears of corn round Miltzow danced along the little waves and
splashed them gaily against the wooden posts of the jetty as though the
freshness down there on the water had filled it with new life. I found
the boat empty, a thing of steep sides and curved bottom, a thing that
was surely never intended for the ferrying across of horses and
carriages. No other boat was to be seen. Up the channel and down the
channel there was nothing visible but the flat green shores, the dancing
water, the wide sky, the bland afternoon light.
I turned back thoughtfully to the cottages. Suppose the ferry were only
used for ferrying people? If so, we were in an extremely tiresome fix. A
long way back against the sky I could see the line of trees bordering
the road to Stralsund, and the whole dull, dusty distance would have to
be driven over if the Stahlbrode ferry failed us. August took off his
hat when I came up to him, and said ominously, 'Does the gracious one
permit that I speak a few words?'
'Speak them, August.'
'It is very windy.'
'Not very.'
'It is far to go on water.'
'Not very.'
'Never yet have I been on the sea.'
'Well, you are going on it now.'
With an expression made up of two parts fright and one resignation he
put on his hat again and relapsed into a silence that was grim. I took
Gertrud with me to give me a countenance and walked across to the inn, a
new red-brick house standing out boldly on a bit of rising ground, end
ways on to the sea. The door was open and we went in, knocking with my
sunshade on the floor. We stirred up no life of any sort. Not even a dog
barked at us. The passage was wide and clean with doors on each side of
it and an open door at either end--the one we had come in by followed by
the afternoon sun, and the other framing a picture of sky with the sea
at the bottom, the jetty, the smack with folded sails, and the coast of
Rügen. Seeing a door with _Gaststube_ painted on it I opened it and
peeped in. To my astonishment it was full of men smoking in silence, and
all with their eyes fixed on the opening door. They must have heard us.
They must have seen us passing the window as we came up to the house. I
concluded that the custom of the district requires that strangers shall
in no way be interfered with until they actually ask definite questions;
that it was so became clear by the alacrity with which a yellow-bearded
man jumped up on our asking how we could get across to Rügen, and told
us he was the ferryman and would take us there.
'But there is a carriage--can that go too?' I inquired anxiously,
thinking of the deep bottom and steep sides of the fishing-smack.
'_Alles, Alles_,' he said cheerily; and calling to a boy to come and
help he led the way through the door framing the sea, down a tiny, sandy
garden prickly with gooseberry bushes, to the place where August sat
marvelling on his box.
'Come along!' he shouted as he ran past him.
'What, along that thing of wood?' cried August. 'With my horses? And my
newly-varnished carriage?'
'Come along!' shouted the ferryman, half-way down the jetty.
'Go on, August,' I commanded.
'It can never be accomplished,' said August, visibly breaking out into a
perspiration.
'Go on,' I repeated sternly; but thought it on the whole more discreet
to go on myself on my own feet, and so did Gertrud.
'If the gracious one insists----' faltered August, and began to drive
gingerly down to the jetty with the face of one who thinks his last hour
well on the way.
As I had feared, the carriage was very nearly smashed getting it over
the sides of the smack. I sat up in the bows looking on in terror,
expecting every instant to see the wheels wrenched off, and with their
wrenching the end of our holiday. The optimistic ferryman assured us
that it was going in quite easily--like a lamb, he declared, with great
boldness of imagery. He sloped two ineffectual planks, one for each set
of wheels, up the side of the boat, and he and August, hatless,
coatless, and breathless, lifted the carriage over on to them. It was a
horrid moment. The front wheels twisted right round and were as near
coming off as any wheels I saw in my life. I was afraid to look at
August, so right did he seem to have been when he protested that the
thing could not be accomplished. Yet there was Rügen and here were we,
and we had to get across to it somehow or turn round and do the dreary
journey to Stralsund.
The horses, both exceedingly restive, had been unharnessed and got in
first. They were held in the stern of the boat by two boys, who needed
all their determination to do it. Then it was that I was thankful for
the boat's steep sides, for if they had been lower those horses would
certainly have kicked themselves over into the sea; and what should I
have done then? And how should I have faced him who is in authority over
me if I returned to him without his horses?
'We take them across daily,' the ferryman remarked, airily jerking his
thumb in the direction of the carriage.
'Do so many people drive to Rügen?' I asked astonished, for the plank
arrangements were staringly makeshift.
'Many people?' cried the ferryman. 'Rightly speaking, crowds.'
He was trying to make me happy. At least it reassured August to hear it;
but I could not suppress a smile of deprecation at the size of the fib.
By this time we were under weigh, a fair wind sending us merrily over
the water. The ferryman steered; August stood at his horses' heads
talking to them soothingly; the two boys came and sat on some coiled
ropes close to me, leaned their elbows on their knees and their chins on
their hands, and fixing their blue fisher-boy eyes on my face kept them
there with an unwinking interest during the entire crossing. Oh, it was
lovely sitting up there in the sun, safe so far, in the delicious quiet
of sailing. The tawny sail, darned and patched in divers shades of brown
and red and orange, towered above us against the sky. The huge mast
seemed to brush along across the very surface of the little white
clouds. Above the rippling of the water we could hear the distant larks
on either shore. August had put on his scarlet stable-jacket for the
work of lifting the carriage in, and made a beautiful bit of colour
among the browns of the old boat at the stern. The eyes of the ferryman
lost all the alertness they had had on shore, and he stood at the rudder
gazing dreamily out at the afternoon light on the Rügen meadows. How
perfect it was after the train, after the clattering along the dusty
road, and the heat and terror of getting on board. For one exquisite
quarter of an hour we were softly lapped across in the sun, and for all
that beauty we were only asked to pay three marks, which included the
horses and carriage and the labour of getting us in and out. For a
further small sum the ferryman became enthusiastic and begged me to be
sure to come back that way. There was a single house on the Rügen shore
where he lived, he said, and from which he would watch for us. A little
dog came down to welcome us, but we saw no other living creature. The
carriage conducted itself far more like a lamb on this side, and I drove
away well pleased to have got over the chief difficulty of the tour, the
soft-voiced ferryman wishing us Godspeed, and the two boys unwinking to
the last.
So here we were on the legend-surrounded island. 'Hail, thou isle of
fairyland, filled with beckoning figures!' I murmured under my breath,
careful not to appear too unaccountable in Gertrud's eyes. With eager
interest I looked about me, and anything less like fairyland and more
like the coast of Pomerania lately left I have seldom seen. The road, a
continuation of the road on the mainland, was exactly like other roads
that are dull as far as a rambling village three miles farther on called
Garz--persons referring to the map at the beginning of this book will
see with what a melancholy straightness it proceeds to that village--and
after Garz I ceased to care what it was like, for reasons which I will
now set forth.
There was that afternoon in the market-place of Garz, and I know not
why, since it was neither a Sunday nor a holiday, a brass band playing
with a singular sonorousness. The horses having never before been
required to listen to music, their functions at home being solely to
draw me through the solitudes of forests, did not like it. I was
astonished at the vigour of the dislike they showed who were wont to be
so meek. They danced through Garz, pursued by the braying of the
trumpets and the delighted shouts of the crowd, who seemed to bray and
shout the louder the more the horses danced, and I was considering
whether the time had not come for clinging to Gertrud and shutting my
eyes when we turned a corner and got away from the noise on to the
familiar rattle of the hard country road. I gave a sigh of relief and
stretched out my head to see whether it were as straight a bit as the
last. It was quite as straight, and in the distance bearing down on us
was a black speck that swelled at an awful speed into a motor car. Now
the horses had not yet seen a motor car. Their nerves, already shaken by
the brass band, would never stand such a horrid sight I thought, and
prudence urged an immediate getting out and a rushing to their heads.
'Stop, August!' I cried. 'Jump out, Gertrud--there's a dreadful thing
coming--they're sure to bolt----'
August slowed down in apparent obedience to my order, and without
waiting for him to stop entirely, the motor being almost upon us, I
jumped out on one side and Gertrud jumped out on the other. Before I had
time to run to the horses' heads the motor whizzed past. The horses
strange to say hardly cared at all, only mildly shying as August drove
them slowly along without stopping.
'That's all right,' I remarked, greatly relieved, to Gertrud, who still
held her stocking. 'Now we'll get in again.'
But we could not get in again because August did not stop.
'Call to him to stop,' I said to Gertrud, turning aside to pick some
unusually big poppies.
She called, but he did not stop.
'Call louder, Gertrud,' I said impatiently, for we were now a good way
behind.
She called louder, but he did not stop.
Then I called; then she called; then we called together, but he did not
stop. On the contrary, he was driving on now at the usual pace, rattling
noisily over the hard road, getting more and more out of reach.
'Shout, shout, Gertrud!' I cried in a frenzy; but how could any one so
respectable as Gertrud shout? She sent a faint shriek after the
ever-receding August, and when I tried to shout myself I was seized with
such uncontrollable laughter that nothing whatever of the nature of a
noise could be produced.
Meanwhile August was growing very small in the distance. He evidently
did not know we had got out when the motor car appeared, and was under
the pleasing impression that we were sitting behind him being jogged
comfortably towards Putbus. He dwindled and dwindled with a rapidity
distressing to witness. 'Shout, shout,' I gasped, myself contorted with
dreadful laughter, half-wildest mirth and half despair.
She began to trot down the road after him waving her stocking at his
distant back and emitting a series of shrill shrieks, goaded by the
exigencies of the situation.
The last we saw of the carriage was a yellow glint as the sun caught the
shiny surface of my bandbox; immediately afterwards it vanished over the
edge of a far-away dip in the road, and we were alone with Nature.
Gertrud and I stared at each other in speechless dismay. Then she looked
on in silence while I sank on to a milestone and laughed. There was
nothing, her look said, to laugh at, and much to be earnest over in our
tragic predicament, and I knew it but I could not stop. August had had
no instructions as to where he was driving to or where we were going to
put up that night; of Putbus and Marianna North he had never heard. With
the open ordnance map on my lap I had merely called out directions,
since leaving Miltzow, at cross-roads. Therefore in all human
probability he would drive straight on till dark, no doubt in growing
private astonishment at the absence of orders and the length of the way;
then when night came he would, I supposed, want to light his lamps, and
getting down to do so would immediately be frozen with horror at what he
saw, or rather did not see, in the carriage. What he would do after that
I could not conceive. In sheerest despair I laughed till I cried, and
the sight of Gertrud watching me silently from the middle of the
deserted road only made me less able to leave off. Behind us in the
distance, at the end of a vista of _chaussée_ trees, were the houses of
Garz; in front of us, a long way in front of us, rose the red spire of
the church of Casnewitz, a village through which, as I still remembered
from the map now driving along by itself, our road to Putbus lay. Up and
down the whiteness of this road not a living creature, either in a cart
or on its legs, was to be seen. The bald country, here very bald and
desolate, stretched away on either side into nothingness. The wind
sighed about, whisking little puffs of derisive dust into our eyes as it
passed. There was a dreadful absence of anything like sounds.
'No doubt,' said Gertrud, 'August will soon return?'
'He won't,' I said, wiping my eyes; 'he'll go on for ever. He's wound
up. Nothing will stop him.'
'What, then, will the gracious one do?'
'Walk after him, I suppose,' I said, getting up, 'and trust to something
unexpected making him find out he hasn't got us. But I'm afraid nothing
will. Come on, Gertrud,' I continued, feigning briskness while my heart
was as lead, 'it's nearly six already, and the road is long and lonely.'
'_Ach_,' groaned Gertrud, who never walks.
'Perhaps a cart will pass us and give us a lift. If not we'll walk to
that village with the church over there and see if we can get something
on wheels to pursue August with. Come on--I hope your boots are all
right.'
'_Ach_,' groaned Gertrud again, lifting up one foot, as a dog pitifully
lifts up its wounded paw, and showing me a black cashmere boot of the
sort that is soft and pleasant to the feet of servants who are not
required to use them much.
'I'm afraid they're not much good on this hard road,' I said. 'Let us
hope something will catch us up soon.'
'_Ach_,' groaned poor Gertrud, whose feet are very tender.
But nothing did catch us up, and we trudged along in grim silence, the
desire to laugh all gone.
'You must, my dear Gertrud,' I said after a while, seeking to be
cheerful, 'regard this in the light of healthful exercise. You and I are
taking a pleasant afternoon walk together in Rügen.'
Gertrud said nothing; at all times loathing movement out of doors she
felt that this walking was peculiarly hateful because it had no visible
end. And what would become of us if we were forced to spend the night in
some inn without our luggage? The only thing I had with me was my purse,
the presence of which, containing as it did all the money I had brought,
caused me to cast a careful eye at short intervals behind me, less in
the hope of seeing a cart than in the fear of seeing a tramp; and the
only thing Gertrud had was her half-knitted stocking. Also we had had
nothing to eat but a scrappy tea-basket lunch hours before in the train,
and my intention had been to have food at Putbus and then drive down to
a place called Lauterbach, which being on the seashore was more
convenient for the jelly-fish than Putbus, and spend the night there in
an hotel much recommended by the guide-book. By this time according to
my plans we ought to have been sitting in Putbus eating
_Kalbsschnitzel_. 'Gertrud,' I asked rather faintly, my soul drooping
within me at the thought of the _Kalbsschnitzel_, 'are you hungry?'
Gertrud sighed. 'It is long since we ate,' she said.
We trudged on in silence for another five minutes.
'Gertrud,' I asked again, for during those five minutes my thoughts had
dwelt with a shameful persistency on the succulent and the gross, 'are
you _very_ hungry?'
'The gracious one too must be in need of food,' evaded Gertrud, who for
some reason never would admit she wanted feeding.
'Oh she is,' I sighed; and again we trudged on in silence.
It seemed a long while before we reached that edge over which my bandbox
had disappeared flashing farewell as it went, and when we did get to it
and eagerly looked along the fresh stretch of road in hopes of seeing
August miraculously turned back, we gave a simultaneous groan, for it
was as deserted as the one we had just come along. Something lay in the
middle of it a few yards on, a dark object like a little heap of brown
leaves. Thinking it was leaves I saw no reason for comment; but Gertrud,
whose eyes are very sharp, exclaimed.
'What, do you see August?' I cried.
'No, no--but there in the road--the tea-basket!'
It was indeed the tea-basket, shaken out as it naturally would be on the
removal of the bodies that had kept it in its place, come to us like the
ravens of old to give us strength and sustenance.
'It still contains food,' said Gertrud, hurrying towards it.
'Thank heaven,' said I.
We dragged it out of the road to the grass at the side, and Gertrud lit
the spirit-lamp and warmed what was left in the teapot of the tea. It
was of an awful blackness. No water was to be got near, and we dared not
leave the road to look for any in case August should come back. There
were some sorry pieces of cake, one or two chicken sandwiches grown
unaccountably horrible, and all those strawberries we had avoided at
lunch because they were too small or two much squashed. Over these
mournful revels the church spire of Casnewitz, now come much closer,
presided; it was the silent witness of how honourably we shared, and how
Gertrud got the odd sandwich because of her cashmere boots.
Then we buried the tea-basket in a ditch, in a bed of long grass and
cow-parsley, for it was plain that I could not ask Gertrud, who could
hardly walk as it was, to carry it, and it was equally plain that I
could not carry it myself, for it was as mysteriously heavy as other
tea-baskets and in size very nearly as big as I am. So we buried it, not
without some natural regrets and a dim feeling that we were flying in
the face of Providence, and there it is, I suppose, grown very rusty, to
this day.
After that Gertrud got along a little better, and my thoughts being no
longer concentrated on food I could think out what was best to be done.
The result was that on reaching Casnewitz we inquired at once which of
the cottages was an inn, and having found one asked a man who seemed to
belong there to let us have a conveyance with as much speed as possible.
'Where have you come from?' he inquired, staring first at one and then
at the other.
'Oh--from Garz.'
'From Garz? Where do you want to go to?'
'To Putbus.'
'To Putbus? Are you staying there?'
'No--yes--anyhow we wish to drive there. Kindly let us start as soon as
possible.'
'Start! I have no cart.'
'Sir,' said Gertrud with much dignity, 'why did you not say so at once?'
'_Ja, ja, Fräulein_, why did I not?'
We walked out.
'This is very unpleasant, Gertrud,' I remarked, and I wondered what
those at home would say if they knew that on the very first day of my
driving-tour I had managed to lose the carriage and had had to bear the
banter of publicans.
'There is a little shop,' said Gertrud. 'Does the gracious one permit
that I make inquiries there?'
We went in and Gertrud did the talking.
'Putbus is not very far from here,' said the old man presiding, who was
at least polite. 'Why do not the ladies walk? My horse has been out all
day, and my son who drives him has other things now to do.'
'Oh we can't walk,' I broke in. 'We must drive because we might want to
go beyond Putbus--we are not sure--it depends----'
The old man looked puzzled. 'Where is it that the ladies wish to go?' he
inquired, trying to be patient.
'To Putbus, anyhow. Perhaps only to Putbus. We can't tell till we get
there. But indeed, indeed you must let us have your horse.'
Still puzzled, the old man went out to consult with his son, and we
waited in profound dejection among candles and coffee. Putbus was not,
as he had said, far, but I remembered how on the map it seemed to be a
very nest of cross-roads, all radiating from a round circus sort of
place in the middle. Which of them would August consider to be the
straight continuation of the road from Garz? Once beyond Putbus he would
be lost to us indeed.
It took about half an hour to persuade the son and to harness the horse;
and while this was going on we stood at the door watching the road and
listening eagerly for sounds of wheels. One cart did pass, going in the
direction of Garz, and when I heard it coming I was so sure that it was
August that I triumphantly called to Gertrud to run and tell the old man
we did not need his son. Gertrud, wiser, waited till she saw what it
was, and after the quenching of that sudden hope we both drooped more
than ever.
'Where am I to drive to?' asked the son, whipping up his horse and
bumping us away over the stones of Casnewitz. He sat huddled up looking
exceedingly sulky, manifestly disgusted at having to go out again at the
end of a day's work. As for the cart, it was a sad contrast to the
cushioned comfort of the vanished victoria. It was very high, very
wooden, very shaky, and we sat on a plank in the middle of so terrible a
noise that when we wanted to say anything we had to shout. 'Where am I
to drive to?' repeated the youth, scowling over his shoulder.
'Please drive straight on until you meet a carriage.'
'A what?'
'A carriage.'
'Whose carriage?'
'My carriage.'
He scowled round again with deepened disgust. 'If you have a carriage,'
he said, looking at us as though he were afraid we were lunatics, 'why
are you in my cart?'
'Oh why, why are we!' I cried wringing my hands, overcome by the
wretchedness of our plight; for we were now beyond Casnewitz, and gazing
anxiously ahead with the strained eyes of Sister Annes we saw the road
as straight and as empty as ever.
The youth drove on in sullen silence, his very ears seeming to flap with
scorn; no more good words would he waste on two mad women. The road now
lay through woods, beautiful beechwoods that belong to Prince Putbus,
not fenced off but invitingly open to every one, with green shimmering
depths and occasional flashes of deer. The tops of the great beeches
shone like gold against the sky. The sea must have been quite close, for
though it was not visible the smell of it was everywhere. The nearer we
got to Putbus the more civilised did the road become. Seats appeared on
either side at intervals that grew more frequent. Instead of the usual
wooden sign-posts, iron ones with tarnished gilt lettering pointed down
the forest lanes; and soon we met the first of the Putbus lamp-posts,
also iron and elaborate, wandered out, as it seemed, beyond the natural
sphere of lamp-posts, to light the innocent country road. All these
signs portended what Germans call _Badegäste_--in English obviously
bath-guests, or, more elegantly, visitors to a bathing resort; and
presently when we were nearer Putbus we began to pass them strolling in
groups and couples and sitting on the seats which were of stone and
could not have been good things for warm bath-guests to sit on.
Wretched as I was I still saw the quaintness and prettiness of Putbus.
There was a notice up that all vehicles must drive through it at a
walking pace, so we crawled along its principal street which, whatever
else it contained, contained no sign of August. This street has Prince
Putbus's grounds on one side and a line of irregular houses, all white,
all old-fashioned, and all charming, on the other. A double row of great
trees forms a shady walk on the edge of the grounds, and it is
bountifully supplied with those stone seats so fatal, I am sure, to many
an honest bath-guest. The grounds, trim and shady, have neat paths
winding into their recesses from the road, with no fence or wall or
obstacle of any sort to be surmounted by the timid tourist; every
tourist may walk in them as long and as often as he likes without the
least preliminary bother of gates and lodges.
As we jolted slowly over the rough stones we were objects of the
liveliest interest to the bath-guests sitting out on the pavement in
front of the inns having supper. No sign whatever of August was to be
seen, not even an ordnance map, as I had half expected, lying in the
road. Our cart made more noise here than ever, it being characteristic
of Putbus that things on wheels are heard for an amazing time before and
after their passing. It is the drowsiest little town. Grass grows
undisturbed between the cobbles of the street, along the gutters, and in
the cracks of the pavement on the sidewalk. One or two shops seem
sufficient for the needs of all the inhabitants, including the boys at
the school here which is a sort of German Eton, and from what I saw in
the windows their needs are chiefly picture-postcards and cakes. There
is a white theatre with a colonnade as quaint as all the rest. The
houses have many windows and balconies hung about with flowers. The
place did not somehow seem real in the bright flood of evening sunlight,
it looked like a place in a picture or a dream; but the bath-guests,
pausing in their eating to stare at us, were enjoying themselves in a
very solid and undreamlike fashion, not in the least in harmony with the
quaint background. In spite of my forlorn condition I could not help
reflecting on its probable charms in winter under the clear green of the
cold sky, with all these people away, when the frosted branches of the
trees stretch across to deserted windows, when the theatre is silent for
months, when the inns only keep as much of themselves open as meets the
requirements of the infrequent commercial traveller, and the cutting
wind blows down the street, empty all day long. Certainly a perfect
place to spend a quiet winter in, to go to when one is tired of noise
and bustle and of a world choked to the point of suffocation with
strenuous persons trying to do each other good. Rooms in one of those
spacious old houses with the large windows facing the sun, and plenty of
books--if I were that abstracted but happy form of reptile called a
bookworm, which I believed I am prevented from being only by my sex, the
genus, I am told, being persistently male, I would take care to spend at
least one of my life's winters in Putbus. How divinely quiet it would
be. What a place for him who intends to pass an examination, to write a
book, or who wants the crumples got by crushing together too long with
his fellows to be smoothed out of his soul. And what walks there would
be, to stretch legs and spirits grown stiff, in the crisp wintry woods
where the pale sunshine falls across unspoilt snow. Sitting in my cart
of sorrow in summer sultriness I could feel the ineffable pure cold of
winter strike my face at the mere thought, the ineffable pure cold that
spurs the most languid mind into activity.
Thus far had I got in my reflections, and we had jolted slowly down
about half the length of the street, when a tremendous clatter of hoofs
and wheels coming towards us apparently at a gallop in starkest defiance
of regulations, brought me back with a jerk to the miserable present.
'Bolted,' remarked the surly youth, hastily drawing on one side.
The bath-guests at supper flung down their knives and forks and started
up to look.
'_Halt! Hah!_' cried some of them, '_Es ist verboten! Schritt!
Schritt!_'
'How can he halt?' cried others; 'his horses have bolted.'
'Then why does he beat them?' cried the first.
'It is August!' shrieked Gertrud. 'August! August! We are here! Stop!
Stop!'
For with staring eyes and set mouth August was actually galloping past
us. This time he did hear Gertrud's shriek, acute with anguish, and
pulled the horses on to their haunches. Never have I seen unhappy
coachman with so white a face. He had had, it appeared, the most
stringent private instructions before leaving home to take care of me,
and on the very first day to let me somehow tumble out and lose me! He
was tearing back in the awful conviction that he would find Gertrud and
myself in the form of corpses. 'Thank God!' he cried devoutly on seeing
us, 'Thank God! Is the gracious one unhurt?'
Certainly poor August had had the worst of it.
Now it is most unlikely that the bath-guests of Putbus will ever enjoy
themselves quite so much again. Their suppers all grew cold while they
crowded round to see and listen. August, in his relief, was a changed
creature. He was voluble and loud as I never could have believed.
Jumping off his box to turn the horses round and help me out of the
cart, he explained to me and to all and any who chose to listen how he
had driven on and on through Putbus, straight round the circus to the
continuation of the road on the north side, where sign-posts revealed to
him that he was heading for Bergen, more and more surprised at receiving
no orders, more and more struck by the extreme silence behind him. 'The
gracious one,' he amplified for the benefit of the deeply-interested
tourists, 'exchanges occasional observations with Fräulein'--the
tourists gazed at Gertrud--'and the cessation of these became by degrees
noticeable. Yet it is not permissible that a well-trained coachman
should turn to look, or interfere with a _Herrschaft_ that chooses to be
silent----'
'Let us get on, August,' I interrupted, much embarrassed by all this.
'The luggage must be seen to--the strain of the rapid driving----'
A dozen helpful hands stretched out with offers of string.
'Finally,' continued August, not to be stopped in his excited account,
manipulating the string and my hold-all with shaking fingers--' finally
by the mercy of Providence the map used by the gracious one fell out'--I
knew it would--'as a peasant was passing. He called to me, he pointed to
the road, I pulled up, I turned round, and what did I see? What I then
saw I shall never--no, never forget--no, not if my life should continue
to a hundred.' He put his hand on his heart and gasped. The crowd waited
breathless. 'I turned round,' continued August, 'and I saw nothing.'
'But you said you would never forget what you saw,' objected a
dissatisfied-looking man.
'Never, never shall I forget it.'
'Yet you saw nothing at all.'
'Nothing, nothing. Never will I forget it.'
'If you saw nothing you cannot forget it,' persisted the dissatisfied
man.
'I say I cannot--it is what I say.'
'That will do, August,' I said; 'I wish to drive on.'
The surly youth had been listening with his chin on his hand. He now
removed his chin, stretched his hand across to me sitting safely among
my cushions, and said, 'Pay me.'
'Pay him, Gertrud,' I said; and having been paid he turned his horse and
drove back to Casnewitz scornful to the last.
'Go on, August,' I ordered. 'Go on. We can hold this thing on with our
feet. Get on to your box and go on.'
The energy in my voice penetrated at last through his agitation. He got
up on to his box, settled himself in a flustered sort of fashion, the
tourists fell apart staring their last and hardest at a vision about to
vanish, and we drove away.
'It is impossible to forget that which has not been,' called out the
dissatisfied man as August passed him.
'It is what I say--it is what I say!' cried August, irritated.
Nothing could have kept me in Putbus after this.
Skirting the circus on the south side we turned down a hill to the
right, and immediately were in the country again with cornfields on
either side and the sea like a liquid sapphire beyond them. Gertrud and
I put a coat between us in place of the abandoned tea-basket, and
settled in with an appreciation of our comforts that we had not had
before. Gertrud, indeed, looked positively happy, so thankful was she to
be safely in the carriage again, and joy was written in every line of
August's back. About a mile and a half off lay Lauterbach, a little
straggling group of houses down by the water; and quite by itself, a
mile to the left of Lauterbach, I could see the hotel we were going to,
a long white building something like a Greek temple, with a portico and
a flight of steps the entire length of its façade, conspicuous in its
whiteness against a background of beechwoods. Woods and fields and sea
and a lovely little island a short way from the shore called Vilm, were
bathed in sunset splendour. Lauterbach and not Putbus, then, was the
place of radiant jelly-fish and crystal water and wooded coves. Probably
in those distant years when Marianne North enjoyed them Lauterbach as an
independent village with a name to itself did not exist. A branch
railway goes down now to the very edge of the sea. We crossed the line
and drove between chestnut trees and high grassy banks starry with
flowers to the Greek hotel.
How delightful it looked as we got out of the deep chestnut lane into
the open space in front of it before we were close enough to see that
time had been unkind. The sea was within a stone's throw on the right
beyond a green, marshy, rushy meadow. On the left people were mowing in
a field. Across the field the spire of a little Lutheran church looked
out oddly round the end of the pagan portico. Behind and on either side
were beeches. Not a soul came out as we drew up at the bottom of the
steps. Not a soul was to be seen except the souls with scythes in the
meadow. We waited a moment, thinking to hear a bell rung and to see
flying waiters, but no one came. The scythes in the meadow swished, the
larks called down that it was a fine evening, some fowls came and pecked
about on the sunny steps of the temple, some red sails passed between
the trunks of the willows down near the water.
'Shall I go in?' inquired Gertrud.