The day I went home was terribly long. It seemed to me as if my journey
would never come to an end....
I was so deeply stirred that I could have wept. My lips quivered and my
breast was as empty as if all the air had been pumped out of my lungs.
As the train glided into the small station I pulled down the window and
looked out.
It was all so joyously familiar. The name with the foreign,
snarling sound. The station-master, erect and stiff, like the old
non-commissioned officer with a big German beard that he was. The
flowers on the window-sills of the station-house. The faces of the
station-master's wife and children against the window-panes. The smell
of asphalte from the sun-baked platform.
And over there--why, that was my father, _my_ dear, dear old father! He
seemed to me to have aged a good deal. His broad back, which before had
been so straight and so proudly erect, was bent and tired; and his face
looked worn as if after a long illness.
His glance went down the train from carriage to carriage. I waved my
hand to him and called out:
"Father!"
He turned at the sound and stared at me a moment.
At first a startled look seemed to pass over his face. A sudden wonder,
as when you see something you have not expected, and then it seemed to
me that he tottered backwards a step or two when he understood who it
was that had called. He bent his head and pressed his hand to his eyes.