there is an altarpiece put there by the Swedish Field-Marshal Wrangel,
who in the seventeenth century lived in a turreted Schloss near by that
I had seen from the hills. A closed-in seat high up on the side of the
chancel was where he sat; it has latticed windows and curiously-painted
panels, with his arms in the middle panel and those of Prince Putbus, to
whom the Schloss now belongs, on either side. The parson took me up into
the gallery and showed me a picture of John the Baptist's head, just
off, with Herodias trying to pull out its tongue. I said I thought it
nasty, and he told me it had been moved up there because the lady
downstairs over whose head it used to hang was made ill by it every
Sunday. Had the parishioners up in the gallery thicker skins, I asked?
But there was no question of skins, because the congregation never
overflowed into the galleries. There is another picture up there, the
Supper at Emmaus, with the Scripture account written underneath in
Latin. The parson read this aloud, and his eyes, otherwise so mild, woke
into gleams of enthusiasm. It sounded very dignified and compressed to
ears accustomed to Luther's lengthy rendering of the same thing. I
remarked how beautiful it was, and with a pleased smile he at once read
it again, and then translated it into Greek, lingering lovingly over
each of the beautiful words. I sat listening in the cool of the dusty
little gallery, gazing out at the summer fields and the glistening water
of the Bodden through the open door. His gentle voice made a soft
droning in the emptiness. A swallow came in and skimmed about anxiously,
trying to get out again.
'The painted pulpit was also given by Wrangel,' said the parson, as we
went downstairs.
'He seems to have given a great deal.'
'He needed to, to make good all his sins,' he replied with a smile.
'Many were the sins he committed.'
I smiled too. Posterity in the shape of the parishioners of Bobbin have
been direct gainers by Wrangel's sins.
'Good, you see, comes out of evil,' I observed.
He shook his head.
'Well, painted pulpits do then,' I amended; for who that is in his
senses would contradict a parson?
I gave a last glance at the quaint pulpit across which a shaft of
coloured sunlight lay, inquired if I might make an offering for the poor
of Bobbin, made it, thanked my amiable guide, and was accompanied by him
out into the heat that danced among the tombstones down to the carriage.
To the last he was mild and kind, tucking the Holland cover round me
with the same solicitude that he might have shown in a January
snowstorm.
Glowe, my destination, is not far from Bobbin. On the way we passed the
Schloss with the four towers where the wicked Wrangel committed all
those sins that presently crystallised into a painted pulpit. The
Schloss, called the Spyker Schloss, is let to a farmer. We met him
riding home, to his coffee, I suppose, it being now nearly five, and I
caught a glimpse of a beautiful old garden with ancient pyramids of box,
many flowers, broad alleys, and an aggressively new baby in a
perambulator beneath the trees, rending the holy quiet of the afternoon
with its shrieks. They pursued us quite a long way along the bald high
road that brought us after another mile to Glowe.
Glowe is a handful of houses built between the high road and the sea.
There is nothing on the other side of the road but a great green plain
stretching to the Bodden. We stopped at the first inn we came to--it was
almost the first house--a meek, ugly little place, with the following
severe advice to tourists hanging up in the entrance:--
_Sag was Du willst kurz und bestimmt._
_Lass alle schöne Phrasen fehlen;_
_Wer nutzlos unsere Zeit uns nimmt_
_Bestiehlt uns--und Du sollst nicht stehlen._
Accordingly I was very short with the landlord when he appeared, left
out most of my articles, all of my adjectives, clipped my remarks of
weaknesses such as please and thank you, and became at last ferociously
monosyllabic in my effort to give satisfaction. My room was quite nice,
with two windows looking across the plain. Cows were tethered on it
almost to where the Bodden glittered in the sun, and it was scattered
over with great pale patches of clover. On the left was the Spyker
Schloss, with the spire of Bobbin church behind it. Far away in front,
blue with distance but still there, rose as usual the round tower of the
ubiquitous Jagdschloss. I leaned out into the sunshine, and the air was
full of the freshness of the pines I had seen from the heights, and the
freshness of the invisible sea. Some one downstairs was playing sadly on
a cello, tunes that reeked of _Weltschmerz_, and overhead the larks
shrilled an exquisite derision.
I thought I would combine luncheon, tea, and dinner in one meal, and so
have done with food for the day, so I said to the landlord, still
careful to be _kurz und bestimmt_: 'Bring food.' I left it to him to
decide what food, and he brought me fried eels and asparagus first,
sausages with cranberries second, and coffee with gooseberry jam last.
It was odd and indigestible, but quite clean. Afterwards I went down to
the shore through an ear-wiggy, stuffy little garden at the back, where
mosquitoes hummed round the heads of silent bath-guests sitting
statuesquely in tiny arbours, and flies buzzed about me in a cloud. On
the shore the fishermen's children were wading about and playing in the
parental smacks. The sea looked so clear that I thought it would be
lovely to have yet another bathe; so I sent a boy to call Gertrud, and
set out along the beach to the very distant and solitary bathing-house.
It was clean and convenient, but there were more local children playing
in it, darting in and out of the dusky cells like bats. No one was in
charge, and rows of towels and clothes hung up on hooks only asking to
be used. Gertrud brought my things and I got in. The water seemed
desperately cold and stinging, colder far than the water at
Stubbenkammer that morning, almost intolerably cold; but perhaps it only
seemed so because of the eels and cranberries that had come too. The
children were deeply interested, and presently undressed and followed me
in, one girl bathing only in her pinafore. They were very kind to me,
showed me the least stony places, encouraged me when I shivered, and
made a tremendous noise,--I concluded for my benefit, because after
every outburst they paused and looked at me with modest pride. When I
got out they got out too and insisted on helping Gertrud wring out my
things. I distributed _pfennings_ among them when I was dressed, and
they clung to me closer than ever after that, escorting me in a body
back to the inn, and hardly were they to be persuaded to leave me at the
door.
That evening was one of profound peace. I sat at my bedroom window, my
body and soul in a perfect harmony of content. My body had been so much
bathed and walked about all day that it was incapable of intruding its
shadow on the light of the soul, and remained entirely quiescent,
pleased to be left quiet and forgotten in an easy-chair. The light of my
soul, feeble as it had been since Thiessow, burned that night clear and
steady, for once more I was alone and could breathe and think and
rejoice over the serenity of the next few days that lay before me like a
fair landscape in the sun. And when I had come to the end of the island
and my drive I would go home and devote ardent weeks to bringing
Charlotte and the Professor together again. If necessary I would even
ask her to come and stay with me, so much stirred was I by the desire to
do good. Match-making is not a work I have cared about since one that I
made with infinite enthusiasm resulted a few months later in reproaches
of a bitter nature being heaped on my head by the persons matched; but
surely to help reunite two noble souls, one of which is eager to be
reunited and the other only does not know what it really wants, is a
blessed work? Anyhow the contemplation of it made me glow.
After the sun had dropped behind the black line of pines on the right
the plain seemed to wrap itself in peace. The road beneath my window was
quite quiet except for the occasional clatter past of a child in wooden
shoes. Of all the places I had stayed at in Rügen this place was the
most countrified and innocent. Idly I sat there, enjoying the soft
dampness of the clover-laden air, counting how many stars I could see in
the pale sky, watching the women who had been milking the cows far away
across the plain come out of the dusk towards me carrying their frothing
pails. It must have been quite late, for the plain had risen up in front
of my window like a great black wall, when I heard a rattle of wheels on
the high road in the direction of Bobbin. At first very faint it grew
rapidly louder. 'What a time to come along this lonely road,' I thought;
and wondered how it would be farther along where the blackness of the
pines began. But the cart pulled up immediately beneath my window, and
leaning out I saw the light from the inn door stream on to a green hat
that I knew, and familiar shoulders draped in waterproof clothing.
'Why, what in the world----' I exclaimed.
The Professor looked up quickly. 'Lot left Sassnitz by steamer this
morning,' he cried in English and in great jubilation. 'She took a
ticket for Arkona. I received full information in Sassnitz, and started
at once. This horned cattle of a coachman, however, will drive me no
farther. I therefore appeal to thee to take me on in thy carriage.'
'What, never to-night?'
'To-night? Certainly to-night. Who knows where she will go to-morrow?'
'But Arkona is miles away--we should never get there--it would kill the
horses'----
'Tut, tut, tut,' was all the answer I got, ejected with a terrific
impatience; and much accompanying clinking of money made it evident that
the person described as horned cattle was being paid.
I turned and stared at Gertrud, who had been arrested by this
conversation in the act of arranging my bed, with a stare of horror.
Then in a flash I saw which was the one safe place, and I flung myself
all dressed into the bed. 'Go down, Gertrud,' I said, pulling the
bedclothes up to my chin, 'and say what you like to the Professor. Tell
him I am in bed and nothing will get me out of it. Tell him I'll drive
him to-morrow to any place on earth. Yes--tell him that. Tell him I
promise, I promise faithfully, to see him through. Go on, and lock me
in.' For I heard a great clamour on the stairs, and who knows what an
agitated wise man may not do, and afterwards pretend he was in an
abstraction?
But I had definitely pledged myself to a course of active meddling.
THE NINTH DAY
FROM GLOWE TO WIEK
The landlord was concerned, Gertrud told me, when he heard we were going
to drive to Arkona at an hour in the morning known practically only to
birds. Professor Nieberlein, after fuming long and audibly in the
passage downstairs, had sent her up with a request, made in his hearing,
that the carriage might be at the door for that purpose at four o'clock.
'At that hour there is no door,' said the landlord.
'Tut, tut,' said the Professor.
The landlord raised his hands and described the length and sandiness of
the way.
'Three o'clock, then,' was all the Professor said to that, calling after
Gertrud.
'Oh, oh!' was my eloquent exclamation when she came in and told me; and
I pulled the bedclothes up still higher, as though seeking protection in
them from the blows of Fate.
'It is possible August may oversleep himself,' suggested Gertrud, seeing
my speechless objection to starting for anywhere at three o'clock.
'So it is; I think it very likely,' I said, emerging from the bedclothes
to speak earnestly. 'Till six o'clock, I should think he would sleep--at
_least_ till six; should not you, Gertrud?'
'It is very probable,' said Gertrud; and went away to give the order.
August did. He slept so heavily that eight o'clock found the Professor
and myself still at Glowe, breakfasting at a little table in the road
before the house on flounders and hot gooseberry jam. The Professor was
much calmer, quite composed in fact, and liked the flounders, which he
said were as fresh as young love. He had been very tired after his long
day and the previous sleepless night, and when he found I was immovable
he too had gone to bed and overslept himself Immediately on seeing him
in the morning I told him what I felt sure was true--that Charlotte,
knowing I would come to Arkona in the course of my drive round the
coast, had gone on there to wait for me. 'So there is really no hurry,'
I added.
'Hurry? certainly not,' he said, gay and reasonable after his good
night. 'We will enjoy the present, little cousin, and the admirable
flounders.' And he told me the story of the boastful man who had vaunted
the loftiness of his rooms to a man poorer than himself except in wit;
and the poorer man, weary of this talk of ceilings, was goaded at last
to relate how in his own house the rooms were so low that the only
things he could ever have for meals were flounders; and though I had
heard the story before I took care to exhibit a decent mirth in the
proper place, ending by laughing with all my heart only to see how the
Professor laughed and wiped his eyes.
It was a close day of sunless heat. The sky was an intolerable grey
glare. There was no wind, and the flies buzzed in swarms about the
horses' heads as we drove along the straight white road between the
pines towards Arkona. Gertrud was once more relegated to a cart, but she
did not look nearly so grim as before; she obviously preferred the
Professor to his wife, which was a lapse from the normal discretion of
her manners, Gertruds not being supposed to have preferences, and
certainly none that are obvious.
From Glowe the high road goes through the pines almost without a bend to
the next place, Juliusruh, about an hour and a half north of Glowe. We
did not pass a single house. The way was absolutely lonely, and its
stuffiness dreadful. We could see neither the Baltic nor the Bodden,
though both were only a few yards off on the other side of the pines. At
Juliusruh, a flat, airless place of new lodging-houses, we did get a
glimpse of a mud-coloured sea; and after Juliusruh, the high road and
the pines abruptly ending, we got into the open country of whose
sandiness the Glowe landlord had spoken with uplifted hands. As we
laboured along at a walking pace the greyness of the sky grew denser,
and it began to rain. This was the first rain I had had during my
journey, and it was delicious. The ripe corn on our left looked a deeper
gold against the dull sky; the ditches were like streaks of light, they
were so crammed with yellow flowers; the air grew fragrant with wetness;
and, best of all, the dust left off. The Professor put up his umbrella,
which turned out to be so enormous when open that we could both sit
comfortably under it and keep dry; and he was in such good spirits at
being fairly on Charlotte's tracks that I am inclined to think it was
the most agreeable drive I had had in Rügen. The traveller, however, who
does not sit under one umbrella with a pleased Professor on the way to
Arkona must not suppose that he too will like this bit best, for he will
not.
The road turns off sharply inland at Vitt, a tiny fisher-hamlet we came
upon unexpectedly, hidden in a deep clough. It is a charming little
place--a few fishermen's huts, a minute inn, and a great many walnut
trees. Passing along the upper end of the clough we looked straight down
its one shingly street to the sea washing among rocks. Big black
fisher-boats were hauled up almost into the street itself. A forlorn
artist's umbrella stood all alone half-way down, sheltering an
unfinished painting from the gentle rain, while the artist--I supposed
him to be the artist because of his unique neck arrangements--watched it
wistfully from the inn door. As Vitt even in rain was perfectly charming
I can confidently recommend it to the traveller; for on a sunny day it
must be quite one of the prettiest spots in Rügen. If I had been alone I
would certainly have stayed there at least one night, though the inn
looked as if its beds were feather and its butter bad; but I now had a
mission, and he who has a mission spends most of his time passing the
best things by.
'Is not that a little paradise?' I exclaimed.
The Professor quoted Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb, remarking that he
understood their taste better than that of those persons who indulge in
ill-defined and windy raptures about scenery and the weather.
'But we cannot all have the tastes of great scholars,' I said rather
coldly, for I did not like the expression windy raptures.
'If thou meanest me by great scholars, thou female babe, know that my
years and poor rudiments of learning have served only to make it clear
to me that the best things in life are of the class to which sitting
under one umbrella with a dear little cousin belong. I endeavoured
yesterday to impress this result of experience on the long Englishman,
but he is still knee-deep in theories, and cannot yet see the simple and
the close at hand.'
'I don't care one little bit for the umbrella form of joy,' I said
obstinately. 'It is the blankest dulness compared to the joy to be
extracted from looking at a place like Vitt in fine weather.'
'Tut, tut,' said the Professor, 'talk not to me of weather. Thou dost
not mean it from thy heart.' And he arranged the rug afresh round me so
that I should not get wet, and inquired solicitously why I did not wear
a waterproof cloak like his, which was so very _praktisch_.
From Vitt the road to Arkona describes a triangle of which the village
of Putgarten is the apex, and round which it took us half an hour to
drive. We got to Arkona, which consists solely of a lighthouse with an
inn in it, about one.
'Now for the little Lot,' cried the Professor leaping out into the rain
and hastening towards the emerging landlord, while I hurriedly rehearsed
the main points of my arguments.
But Charlotte was not there. She had been there, the landlord said, the
previous afternoon, having arrived by steamer; had asked for a bedroom,
been shown one, but had wanted better accommodation than he could give.
Anyhow after drinking coffee she had hired a conveyance and had gone on
to Wiek.
The Professor was terribly crestfallen. 'We will go on, then,' he said.
'We will at once proceed to Wiek. Where Wiek is, I conclude we shall
ultimately discover.'
'I know where it is--it's on the map.'
'I never doubted it.'
'I mean I know the way from here. I was going there anyhow, and
Charlotte knew that. But we can't go on yet, dear Professor. The horses
would never get us there. It must be at least ten miles off, and awful
sand the whole way.'
It took me some time and many words to convince him that nothing would
make me move till the horses had had a feed and a rest. 'We'll only stay
here a few hours,' I comforted, 'and get to Wiek anyhow to-day.'
'But who can tell whether she will be there two nights running?' cried
the Professor, excitedly striding about in the mud.
'Why, we can, when we get there, and it's no use bothering till we are
there. But I'm sure she'll wait till I come. Let us go in out of the
rain.'
'I will hire a cart,' he announced with great determination.
'What, and go on without me?'
'I tell thee I will hire a cart. No time shall be lost.'
And he ran back again to the landlord who was watching us from the door
with much disapproval; for I suppose Charlotte's refusal to consider his
accommodation worthy of her had not disposed him well towards her
friends, and possibly he considered the Professor's rapid movements
among the puddles too unaccountable to be nice. There was no cart, he
said, absolutely none; and the Professor, in a state of fuming
dejection, was forced to what resignation he could muster.
During this parleying I had been sitting alone under the umbrella, the
rain falling monotonously on its vast surface, running off the glazed
lid of my yellow bandbox in streams, and dripping from the brim of
August's hat down his patient neck. A yard or two behind sat Gertrud on
the hold-all, dimly visible through the cloud of steam rising from the
back of her soaked cart-horse. I could hear the sea at the foot of the
cliff sluggishly heaving on and off the shingle, and I could see it over
the edge of the cliff to the east, and here for the first time round the
bend of the island to the north. It was flat, oily, and brown. Never was
such a dreary sea or such a melancholy spot. I got out and went into the
house feeling depressed.
The landlord led us into a room at the back, the room in front being for
the use of fishermen wishing to drink. Clouds of smoke and a great
clamour smote our senses when he opened the door. The room was full of
what looked like an excursion; about thirty people, male and female,
sitting at narrow tables eating, chattering, singing, and smoking all at
once. Three specially variegated young women, dressed in the flimsiest
of fine-weather clothes, all damp muslin and feathers, pretty girls with
pronounced hair arrangements, were smoking cigarettes; and in the corner
near the door, demure and solitary, sat another pretty young woman in
black, with a very small bonnet trimmed with a very big Alsatian bow on
the back of a very elaborately curled head. Her eyes were discreetly
fixed on a Wiener Schnitzel that she was eating with a singular
mincingness; and all those young men who could not get near the girls in
muslin, were doing their utmost to attract this one's notice.
'We can't stay here,' I whispered to the Professor; 'it is too
dreadful.'
'Dreadful? It is humanity, little cousin. Humanity at its happiest--in
other words, at its dinner.'
And he pulled off his cloak and hung up his hat with a brisk
cheerfulness at which I, who had just seen him striding about among
puddles, rent with vexation, could only marvel.
'But there is no room,' I objected.
'There is an ample sufficiency of room. We shall sit there in the corner
by the young lady in black.'
'Well, you go and sit there, and I'll go out into that porch place over
there, and get some air.'
'Never did I meet any one needing so much air. Air! Has thou not, then,
been aired the entire morning?'
But I made my way through the smoke to a door standing open at the other
end that led into a little covered place, through which was the garden.
I put my head gratefully round the corner to breathe the sweet air. The
garden is on the west side of the lighthouse on ground falling steeply
away to the flat of the cornfields that stretch between Arkona and
Putgarten. It is a pretty place full of lilies--in flower that day--and
of poplars, those most musical of trees. Rough steps cut in the side of
the hill lead down out of the garden to a footpath through the rye to
Putgarten; and on the top step, as straight and motionless as the
poplars, stood two persons under umbrellas, gazing in silence at the
view. Oh, unmistakable English backs! And most unmistakable of all
backs, the backs of the Harvey-Brownes.
I pulled my head into the porch again with a wrench, and instinctively
turned to flee; but there in the corner of the room sat the Professor,
and I could hear him being pleasant to the young person in the Alsatian
bow. I did not choose to interrupt him, for she was obviously Mrs.
Harvey-Browne's maid; but I did wonder whether the bishop had grieved at
all over the manifest unregeneracy of the way she did her hair.
Hesitating where to go, and sure of being ultimately caught wherever I
went, I peeped again in a sort of fascination at the two mackintoshed
figures outlined against the lowering heavens; and as so often happens,
the persons being looked at turned round.
'My _dear_ Frau X., you here too? When did you arrive in this terrible
place?' cried Mrs. Harvey-Browne, hurrying towards me through the rain
with outstretched hand and face made up of welcome and commiseration.
'This is too charming--to meet you again, but here! Imagine it, we were
under the impression it was a place one could stay at, and we brought
all our luggage and left our comfortable Binz for good. It is impossible
to be in that room. We were just considering what we could do, and
feeling really desperate. Brosy, is not this a charming surprise?'
Brosy smiled, and said it was very charming, and he wished it would
leave off raining. He supposed I was only driving through on my way
round?
'Yes,' I said, a thousand thoughts flying about in my head.
'Have you seen anything more of the Nieberleins?' asked Mrs.
Harvey-Browne, shutting her umbrella, and preparing to come inside the
porch too.
'My cousin left that evening, as you know,' I said.
'Yes; I could not help wondering----' began Mrs. Harvey-Browne; but was
interrupted by her son, who asked where I was going to sleep that night.
'I think at Wiek,' I answered.
'Isn't Wiek a little place on the----' began Brosy; but was interrupted
by his mother, who asked if the Professor had followed his wife.
'Yes,' I said.
'I confess I was surprised----' began Mrs. Harvey-Browne; but was
interrupted by her son, who asked whether I thought Lohme possessed an
hotel where one could stay.
'I should think so from the look of it as I passed through,' I said.
'Because----' began Brosy; but was interrupted by his mother, who asked
whether I had heard anything of the dear Professor since he left.
'Delightful genius,' she added enthusiastically.
'Yes,' I said.
'I suppose he and his wife will go back to Bonn now?'
'Soon, I hope.'
'Did you say he had gone to Berlin? Is he there now?'
'No, he isn't.'
'Have you seen him again?'
'Yes; he came back to Stubbenkammer.'