There come days in our lives which we afterwards remember as some
blessed dream which knows nothing of earthly sufferings or earthly
restrictions, in which we soar as on the pinions of eagles, strong and
high above all the little pitiful obstacles that otherwise so
lamentably hamper our feet.
Of such dream-like beauty was the day on which I took the most
memorable journey of my life: a wonderful summer day, whose glorious
brightness was not marred by the smallest cloud, and yet palpitating in
a mild balmy air that played around my cheeks and brow, while the train
whirled in rattling speed through the lovely Thüringian country. It was
the first journey I had made in my life, at least the first that was
not a business trip, and the first also that took me from my northern
home into the sunny plains of Middle Germany. The novelty of the
scenery probably helped to make everything appear to me doubly graceful
and lovely: I could not satiate myself with gazing at the soft
undulating lines of the hills; at the sharply-defined crags whose
summits were crowned with ruined fortresses and ancient keeps, and
whose feet were laved by the clear water of winding rivers; at the
flowing meadow-lands in which lines of trees with foliage of brightest
green marked the courses of the streams; at the cities and towns that
lay so peacefully in the valley, and at the little villages that
nestled so cosily among the trees. It was not Sunday, but all these
things wore a Sunday look, even the men who were working alone in the
fields and stopped to look as the train rushed by, or those gathered in
the neat stations where we stopped. It was as if everybody was
travelling only for pleasure, and that even taking farewell was not
painful on such a lovely day. And then the meetings of friends--the
happy faces, the hand-shaking and kissing and embracing! Every one of
these scenes I watched with the liveliest interest, and always with a
feeling of emotion, as if I had a portion in it myself.
Thus I arrived in the afternoon at E., where I quitted the railroad and
engaged a carriage from a number that were at the station to take me
the remaining distance. We soon left the level land and entered a
valley through which the road to "the forest" ran in many windings
between hills on either side. The journey lasted several hours, and the
sun was already declining as we slowly toiled up a mountain the
steepest of all, "but the last," said the driver. We had both descended
and were walking on either side the large and powerful horses, and
keeping the flies off them with pine branches.
"Woa!" cried the driver; the horses stopped.
We had reached the summit, and stopped to let the horses blow a little.
"That is our pride," said the man, as I looked with astonishment at a
primeval and gigantic oak which grew here in an open space in the heart
of the pine forest, and spread its gnarled and weather-beaten boughs
far up against the blue sky.
"That is a great curiosity," he went on. "People come from miles and
miles to see that tree; and it has been painted I don't know how often.
Not many days ago a young lady, who has been staying with us a few
weeks, came here and made a picture of it. I drove her here myself; I
often drive her about."
Absorbed in my own thoughts hitherto, I had, contrary to my usual
custom, spoken but little with the man, and indeed scarcely noticed
him, and now it seemed as if he and I were old acquaintances, and had
the most intimate interests in common. I asked him the young lady's
name; not that I had any doubt that it was Paula, and yet it was a sort
of shock to me when he pronounced it, and from his lips it sounded
strangely. And now the man, who seemed to have been awaiting his
opportunity, became very communicative, and told me, while we crossed
the back of the mountain and descended in a rattling trot, a multitude
of things about the charming young lady; and the old lady her mother,
who was blind, but who recognized people at once by the voice; and
about the old man, with the hooked nose and long gray moustache and
curly white hair, who was really only their servant, but the ladies
treated him as one of themselves; and yesterday a young gentleman had
arrived, with a sunburnt face and bright brown eyes and long brown
hair, who was the young lady's brother, and a painter too.
The carriage was clattering over the rough pavement of the little town,
and the talkative fellow was still chattering about Paula and the rest.
I had told him that I had come on purpose to see that lady, and that he
must put me down at the inn at which he told me she was staying.
The carriage stopped. The head-waiter with two small myrmidons rushed
out; two boys who saw a chance of their services being called into
requisition as guides came up to have a look at the strange gentleman.
Concealing my agitation, I asked the head-waiter if I could have a
room, and if either of the guests was at home.
I could have a room, he said, but neither of the guests was at home:
the lady and the young gentleman had gone out for a walk, and the young
lady had started for the mountains with Herr Süssmilch early in the
afternoon: she went into the mountains every afternoon: she painted up
there, and hardly ever came back until after sundown.
"Do you know the place?"
"Certainly; perfectly well: this boy here has carried the lady's things
there often enough. Say, Carl, you know where the lady goes to paint?"
"To be sure," said the boy. "Shall I take the gentleman there?"
"Yes," I said, and turned to start at once.
"You need not be in any hurry, sir," the attentive headwaiter called
after me; "you will reach the place in half an hour."
My little guide ran on ahead, and I followed him along the main street
of the little town, planted with lindens, with groups of travellers
seated here and there before the doors, and reached the fields upon
which still lay the golden evening light, and then entered the cool
twilight of the woods. We pursued the wide road which ascended the
mountains by a steep acclivity for the most part, but occasionally ran
along small level glades, and was elsewhere inclosed on both sides by
the tall forest trees. It was wonderfully quiet in the cool pines: no
breeze stirred, scarcely was the silence broken at rare intervals by
the chirp of a bird: the blue sky looked down from above, and I felt as
if the path climbed up to heaven.
No one met us on the way; only when we were almost at the summit and
had turned to the right from the main road into the wood and reached an
open space where stood a sort of hunting-lodge, I saw a couple of men
who were sitting upon benches with mugs of beer in their hands. Out of
the wood, directly opposite the spot at which we had entered the
clearing, came a man followed by a boy carrying an easel and other
painter's apparatus. I recognized the sergeant at once; and my little
guide said that the boy who was carrying the things was his brother
Hans, and that they were coming from the place where the lady used to
paint. This place was only five minutes walk distant, and we had only
to follow the way by which the sergeant and Hans had just come.
My old friend, who was talking in a rather animated manner to the boy,
who probably was not carrying the things carefully enough to please
him, had not observed me, and I was glad of it, for I felt that I was
not in a frame of mind to talk with him. So I gave my guide a sign to
wait for me; and crossed the clearing towards the path he had pointed
out.
It was a broad path, overgrown with short green grass upon which the
foot fell noiselessly, and the pines on both sides were of such growth
that their branches almost entirely roofed it in, so that only here and
there the red sunset glow pierced to the green twilight. It gradually
but continually ascended, and I walked on, not even conscious that I
was walking or moving my limbs, as one ascends heights in a dream. A
breathless expectation, a joyful fear possessed me wholly. Thus might
an immortal spirit feel which is about to enter the presence of its
judge, and with all its timid hesitation, knows still that this judge
is mercy itself.
And now it grew lighter and more open with every step, and I passed out
of the forest upon the crest of the mountain, which to my right hand
rose to a mighty height, while westwardly, to the left, it sloped away
to a deep valley, over which I could see far-distant mountain terraces
rising slope above purple slope, against the evening sky. The sun had
set, but its radiance still lay calm upon the light clouds which
floated over the mountain, and a few paces from me, bathed in the
roseate light reflected from the clouds, stood a female figure by a
mossy rock upon which she leaned her right arm, while her left hand
with her broad straw hat hung idly by her side. She was looking fixedly
at the sunset sky, and her features were clearly defined against the
bright background. Thus I saw her once more.
But she neither saw me nor heard me, for the soft grass muffled my
steps. I wished to call her by name, but could not; and now she slowly
turned her face towards me and looked at me with wide fixed eyes and
unmoving features, as though I were an apparition which she had long
yearned to behold, and which the might of her longings had summoned
before her. But as I spread my arms, saying, "Paula, dearest Paula!" a
heavenly light flashed into her lovely face, a faint cry broke from her
lips, and she lay upon my breast with a storm of passionate tears, as
if all the sorrows she had borne all these long years had burst forth
in one moment.
What I said, what she said, while we stood on the mountain ridge, while
streak after streak of the rosy light faded out of the sky, I cannot
now recall.
And then we went back hand in hand through the silent wood, by another
way than that by which I had come; a way that at first led over a
grassy slope directly down the mountain, so that we could still see the
valley in the faint evening light, and then under high beeches where it
was quite dark, so that Paula held firmly to my hand until we came upon
open spaces and the valley lay before us again, now dim in gray
twilight, so that I thought the descent must be longer than the ascent,
and yet it was so short--so short! What did it matter? I knew that with
her who was leading me down the dim mountain path I would walk
henceforth hand-in-hand so long as we both lived upon earth; and an
inward prayer rose in my soul that her last day might be mine also.
And now I see ourselves--that is our mother, Paula, Oscar and
myself--seated at a table in one of the arbors in front of the inn, and
the light of the lamp in its glass shade falls mildly on the gentle
features of the blind lady who from time to time lays her soft hand
upon mine, and on Paula's dear face that beams with a lovely radiance
from her inward happiness, and upon the beautiful young features of
Oscar, whose dark eyes glow while he tells how a young English nobleman
whose acquaintance he made at Rome has given him a grand commission to
paint a series of frescoes in his castle in the Highlands, and how
before he sets out there, he had to come after his sister to get some
advice from her; and then the youth tosses back his long hair, and
lifts a full glass and drinks it off to our health, and the mother
smiles gently upon us, and as our glasses clink together there appears
in an opening in the trellis that head with the gray moustache and
white hair which played so important a part in the history of art.
Then I am standing at the open window of my room, listening to the
rustling of the west wind in the branches and the plashing of the
fountain before the inn, and my gaze is fixed upon a star that beams
brighter than all the rest in the nightly sky.
And the old sadness awakens once more in my heart, and my eyes fill
with tears.
But when I look again, the star is beaming more brightly than ever, as
if it were an eye looking lovingly down and sending me greeting from
the abodes of the blest.