by Frank Wynne
“Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing,” said Elizabeth’s mother, who sat spinning in her arm-chair. “Your friend Eric sent it this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth.”
“What estate?”
“Why, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“That a month ago Eric took over his father’s second estate by the Immensee.”3
“But you have never said a word to me about it.”
“Well,” said the mother, “you haven’t yet made a single word of inquiry after your friend. He is a very nice, sensible young man.”
The mother went out of the room to make the coffee. Elisabeth had her back turned to Reinhard, and was still busy with the making of her little chick-weed bower.
“Please, just a little longer,” she said, “I’ll be done in a minute.”
As Reinhard did not answer, contrary to his wont, she turned round and faced him. In his eyes there was a sudden expression of trouble which she had never observed before in them.
“What is the matter with you, Reinhard?” she said, drawing nearer to him.
“With me?” he said, his thoughts far away and his eyes resting dreamily on hers.
“You look so sad.”
“Elisabeth,” he said, “I cannot bear that yellow bird.”
She looked at him in astonishment, without understanding his meaning.
“You are so strange,” she said.
He took both her hands in his, and she let him keep them there. Her mother came back into the room shortly after; and after they had drunk their coffee she sat down at her spinning-wheel, while Reinhard and Elisabeth went off into the next room to arrange their plants.
Stamens were counted, leaves and blossoms carefully opened out, and two specimens of each sort were laid to dry between the pages of a large folio volume.
All was calm and still this sunny afternoon; the only sounds to be heard were the hum of the mother’s spinning-wheel in the next room, and now and then the subdued voice of Reinhard, as he named the orders of the families of the plants, and corrected Elisabeth’s awkward pronunciation of the Latin names.
“I am still short of that lily of the valley which I didn’t get last time,” said she, after the whole collection had been classified and arranged.
Reinhard pulled a little white vellum volume from his pocket. “Here is a spray of the lily of the valley for you,” he said, taking out a half-pressed bloom.
When Elisabeth saw the pages all covered with writing, she asked:
“Have you been writing stories again?”
“These aren’t stories,” he answered, handing her the book.
The contents were all poems, and the majority of them at most filled one page. Elisabeth turned over the leaves one after another; she appeared to be reading the titles only. “When she was scolded by the teacher.” “When they lost their way in the woods.” “An Easter story.” “On her writing to me for the first time.” Thus ran most of the titles.
Reinhard fixed his eyes on her with a searching look, and as she kept turning over the leaves he saw that a gentle blush arose and gradually mantled over the whole of her sweet face. He would fain have looked into her eyes, but Elisabeth did not look up, and finally laid the book down before him without a word.
“Don’t give it back like that,” he said.
She took a brown spray out of the tin case. “I will put your favourite flower inside,” she said, giving back the book into his hands.
At length came the last day of the vacation and the morning of his departure. At her own request Elisabeth received permission from her mother to accompany her friend to the stage-coach, which had its station a few streets from their house.
When they passed out of the front door Reinhard gave her his arm, and thus he walked in silence side by side with the slender maiden. The nearer they came to their destination the more he felt as if he had something he must say to her before he bade her a long farewell, something on which all that was worthy and all that was sweet in his future life depended, and yet he could not formulate the saving word. In his anguish, he walked slower and slower.
“You’ll be too late,” she said; “it has already struck ten by St Mary’s clock.”
But he did not quicken his pace for all that. At last he stammered out:
“Elisabeth, you will not see me again for two whole years. Shall I be as dear to you as ever when I come back?”
She nodded, and looked affectionately into his face.
“I stood up for you too,” she said, after a pause.
“Me? And against whom had you to stand up for me?”
“Against my mother. We were talking about you a long time yesterday evening after you left. She thought you were not so nice now as you once were.”
Reinhard held his peace for a moment: then he took her hand in his, and looking gravely into her childish eyes, he said:
“I am still just as nice as I ever was; I would have you firmly believe that. Do you believe it, Elisabeth?”
“Yes,” she said.
He freed her hand and quickly walked with her through the last street. The nearer he felt the time of parting approach, the happier became the look on his face; he went almost too quickly for her.
“What is the matter with you, Reinhard?” she asked.
“I have a secret, a beautiful secret,” said Reinhard, looking at her with a light in his eyes. “When I come back again in two years’ time, then you shall know it.”
Meanwhile they had reached the stage-coach; they were only just in time. Once more Reinhard took her hand. “Farewell!” he said, “farewell, Elisabeth! Do not forget!”
She shook her head. “Farewell,” she said. Reinhard climbed up into the coach and the horses started. As the coach rumbled round the corner of the street he saw her dear form once more as she slowly wended her way home.
A LETTER
Nearly two years later Reinhard was sitting by lamplight with his books and papers around him, expecting a friend with whom he used to study in common. Some one came upstairs. “Come in.” It was the landlady. “A letter for you, Herr Werner,” and she went away.
Reinhard had never written to Elisabeth since his visit home, and he had received no letter from her. Nor was this one from her; it was in his mother’s handwriting.
Reinhard broke the seal and read, and ere long he came to this paragraph:
“At your time of life, my dear boy, nearly every year still brings its own peculiar experience; for youth is apt to turn everything to the best account. At home, too, things have changed very much, and all this will, I fear, cause you much pain at first, if my understanding of you is at all correct.
“Yesterday Eric was at last accepted by Elisabeth, after having twice proposed in vain during the last three months. She had never been able to make up her mind to it, but now in the end she has done so. To my mind she is still far too young. The wedding is to take place soon, and her mother means to go away with them.”
IMMENSEE
Again years have passed. One warm afternoon in spring a young man, whose sunburnt face was the picture of health, was walking along a shady road through the wood leading down to the valley below.
His grave dark eyes looked intently into the distance, as though he was expecting to find every moment some change in the monotony of the road, a change however which seemed reluctant to come about. At length he saw a cart slowly coming up from below.
“Hullo! my friend,” shouted the traveller to the farmer, who was walking by the side of the cart, “is this the right road to Immensee?”
“Yes, straight on,” answered the man touching his slouch hat.
“Is it still far off?”
“You are close to the place, sir. In less time than it takes to smoke half a pipe of tobacco you’ll be at the lake side, and the manor is hard by.”
The farmer passed on while the other quickened his pace as he went along under the trees. After a quarter o
f an hour’s walk the shade to the left of him suddenly came to an end; the road led along a steep slope from which the ancient oaks growing below hardly reared their topmost branches.
Away over their crests opened out a broad, sunny landscape. Far below lay the peaceful, dark-blue lake, almost entirely surrounded by green sun-lit woods, save where on one spot they divided and afforded an extensive view until it closed in the distant blue mountains.
Straight opposite, in the middle of all this forest verdure, there lay a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from the chimney, and circled slowly above the waters.
“Immensee!” exclaimed the traveller.
It almost seemed as if he had now reached the end of his journey, for he stood motionless, looking out over the tops of the trees at his feet, and gazing at the farther shore, where the reflection of the manor-house floated, rocking gently, on the bosom of the water. Then he suddenly started on his way again.
His road now led almost steeply down the mountain-side, so that the trees that had once stood below him again gave him their shade, but at the same time cut off from him the view of the lake, which only now and then peeped out between the gaps in the branches.
Soon the way went gently upwards again, and to left and right the woods disappeared, yielding place to vine-clad hills stretching along the pathway; while on either side stood fruit-trees in blossom, filled with the hum of the bees as they busily pried into the blossoms. A tall man wearing a brown overcoat advanced to meet the traveller. When he had almost come up to him, he waved his cap and cried out in a loud voice:
“Welcome, welcome, brother Reinhard! Welcome to my Immensee estate!”
“God’s greeting to you4, Eric, and thank you for your welcome,” replied the other.
By this time they had come up close to one another, and clasped hands.
“And is it really you?” said Eric, when he at last got a near sight of the grave face of his old school-fellow.
“It is I right enough, Eric, and I recognize you too; only you almost look cheerier than you ever did before.”
At these words a glad smile made Eric’s plain features all the more cheerful.
“Yes, brother Reinhard,” he said, as he once more held out his hand to him, “but since those days, you see, I have won the great prize; but you know that well enough.”
Then he rubbed his hands and cried cheerily: “This will be a surprise! You are the last person she expects to see.”
“A surprise?” asked Reinhard. “For whom, pray?”
“Why, for Elisabeth.”
“Elisabeth! You haven’t told her a word about my visit?”
“Not a word, brother Reinhard; she has no thought of you, nor her mother either. I invited you entirely on the quiet, in order that the pleasure might be all the greater. You know I always had little quiet schemes of my own.”
Reinhard turned thoughtful; he seemed to breathe more heavily the nearer they approached the house.
On the left side of the road the vineyards came to an end, and gave place to an extensive kitchen-garden, which reached almost as far as the lake-shore. The stork had meanwhile come to earth and was striding solemnly between the vegetable beds.
“Hullo!” cried Eric, clapping his hands together, “if that long-legged Egyptian isn’t stealing my short pea-sticks again!”
The bird slowly rose and flew on to the roof of a new building, which ran along the end of the kitchen-garden, and whose walls were covered with the branches of the peach and apricot trees that were trained over them.
“That’s the distillery,” said Eric. “I built it only two years ago. My late father had the farm buildings rebuilt; the dwelling-house was built as far back as my grandfather’s time. So we go ever forward a little bit at a time.”
Talking thus they came to a wide, open space, enclosed at the sides by farm-buildings, and in the rear by the manor-house, the two wings of which were connected by a high garden wall. Behind this wall ran dark hedges of yew trees, while here and there syringa trees trailed their blossoming branches over into the courtyard.
Men with faces scorched by the sun and heated with toil were walking over the open space and gave a greeting to the two friends, while Eric called out to one or another of them some order or question about their day’s work.
By this time they had reached the house. They entered a high, cool vestibule, at the far end of which they turned to the left into a somewhat darker passage.
Here Eric opened a door and they passed into a spacious room that opened into a garden. The heavy mass of leafage that covered the opposite windows filled this room at either end with a green twilight, while between the windows two lofty wide-open folding-doors let in the full glow of spring sunshine, and afforded a view into a garden, laid out with circular flower-beds and steep hedgerows and divided by a straight, broad path, along which the eye roamed out on to the lake and away over the woods growing on the opposite shore.
As the two friends entered, a breath of wind bore in upon them a perfect stream of fragrance.
On a terrace in front of the door leading to the garden sat a girlish figure dressed in white. She rose and came to meet the two friends as they entered, but half-way she stood stock-still as if rooted to the spot and stared at the stranger. With a smile he held out his hand to her.
“Reinhard!” she cried. “Reinhard! Oh! is it you? It is such a long time since we have seen each other.”
“Yes, a long time,” he said, and not a word more could he utter; for on hearing her voice he felt a keen, physical pain at his heart, and as he looked up to her, there she stood before him, the same slight, graceful figure to whom he had said farewell years ago in the town where he was born.
Eric had stood back by the door, with joy beaming from his eyes.
“Now, then, Elisabeth,” he said, “isn’t he really the very last person in the world you would have expected to see?”
Elisabeth looked at him with the eyes of a sister. “You are so kind, Eric,” she said.
He took her slender hand caressingly in his. “And now that we have him,” he said, “we shall not be in a hurry to let him go. He has been so long away abroad, we will try to make him feel at home again. Just see how foreign-looking he has become, and what a distinguished appearance he has!”
Elisabeth shyly scanned Reinhard’s face. “The time that we have been separated is enough to account for that,” she said.
At this moment in at the door came her mother, key-basket on arm.
“Herr Werner!” she cried, when she caught sight of Reinhard; “ah! you are as dearly welcome as you are unexpected.”
And so the conversation went smoothly on with questions and answers. The ladies sat over their work, and while Reinhard enjoyed the refreshment that had been prepared for him, Eric had lighted his huge meerschaum pipe and sat smoking and conversing by his side.
Next day Reinhard had to go out with him to see the fields, the vineyards, the hop-garden, the distillery. It was all well appointed; the people who were working on the land or at the vats all had a healthy and contented look.
For dinner the family assembled in the room that opened into the garden, and the day was spent more or less in company just according to the leisure of the host and hostess. Only during the hours preceding the evening meal, as also during the early hours of the forenoon, did Reinhard stay working in his own room.
For some years past, whenever he could come across them, he had been collecting the rhymes and songs that form part of the life of the people, and now set about arranging his treasure, and wherever possible increasing it by means of fresh records from the immediate neighbourhood.
Elisabeth was at all times gentle and kind. Eric’s constant attentions she received with an almost humble gratitude, and Reinhard thought at whiles that the gay, cheerful child of bygone days had given
promise of a somewhat less sedate womanhood.
Ever since the second day of his visit he had been wont of an evening to take a walk along the shore of the lake. The road led along close under the garden. At the end of the latter, on a projecting mound, there was a bench under some tall birch trees. Elisabeth’s mother had christened it the Evening Bench, because the spot faced westward, and was mostly used at that time of the day in order to enjoy a view of the sunset.
One evening Reinhard was returning from his walk along this road when he was overtaken by the rain. He sought shelter under one of the linden trees that grew by the water-side, but the heavy drops were soon pelting through the leaves. Wet through as he was he resigned himself to his fate and slowly continued his homeward way.
It was almost dark; the rain fell faster and faster. As he drew near to the Evening Bench he fancied he could make out the figure of a woman dressed in white standing among the gleaming birch tree trunks. She stood motionless, and, as far as he could make out on approaching nearer, with her face turned in his direction, as if she was expecting some one.
He thought it was Elisabeth. But when he quickened his pace in order that he might catch up to her and then return together with her through the garden into the house, she turned slowly away and disappeared among the dark side-paths.
He could not understand it; he was almost angry with Elisabeth, and yet he doubted whether it had really been she. He was, however, shy of questioning her about it—nay, he even avoided going into the garden-room on his return to the house for fear he should happen to see Elisabeth enter through the garden-door.
BY MY MOTHER’S HARD DECREE
Some days later, as evening was already closing in, the family was, as usual at this time of the day, sitting all together in their garden-room. The doors stood wide open, and the sun had already sunk behind the woods on the far side of the lake.
Reinhard was invited to read some folk-songs which had been sent to him that afternoon by a friend who lived away in the country. He went up to his room and soon returned with a roll of papers which seemed to consist of detached neatly written pages.