Three More John Silence Stories
Page 3
till the moonrose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earthand stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, and heard themwhisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. Themountain air was indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam of ariver through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silentthoughts across his path, and a hundred smells greeted him from theforest caverns across the years.
Then, when he least expected it, the trees fell away abruptly on bothsides, and he stood on the edge of the village clearing.
He walked faster. There lay the familiar outlines of the houses, sheetedwith silver; there stood the trees in the little central square with thefountain and small green lawns; there loomed the shape of the churchnext to the Gasthof der Bruedergemeinde; and just beyond, dimly risinginto the sky, he saw with a sudden thrill the mass of the huge schoolbuilding, blocked castlelike with deep shadows in the moonlight,standing square and formidable to face him after the silences of morethan a quarter of a century.
He passed quickly down the deserted village street and stopped closebeneath its shadow, staring up at the walls that had once held himprisoner for two years--two unbroken years of discipline andhomesickness. Memories and emotions surged through his mind; for themost vivid sensations of his youth had focused about this spot, and itwas here he had first begun to live and learn values. Not a singlefootstep broke the silence, though lights glimmered here and therethrough cottage windows; but when he looked up at the high walls of theschool, draped now in shadow, he easily imagined that well-known facescrowded to the windows to greet him--closed windows that reallyreflected only moonlight and the gleam of stars.
This, then, was the old school building, standing foursquare to theworld, with its shuttered windows, its lofty, tiled roof, and the spikedlightning-conductors pointing like black and taloned fingers from thecorners. For a long time he stood and stared. Then, presently, he cameto himself again, and realised to his joy that a light still shone inthe windows of the Bruderstube.
He turned from the road and passed through the iron railings; thenclimbed the twelve stone steps and stood facing the black wooden doorwith the heavy bars of iron, a door he had once loathed and dreaded withthe hatred and passion of an imprisoned soul, but now looked upontenderly with a sort of boyish delight.
Almost timorously he pulled the rope and listened with a tremor ofexcitement to the clanging of the bell deep within the building. And thelong-forgotten sound brought the past before him with such a vivid senseof reality that he positively shivered. It was like the magic bell inthe fairy-tale that rolls back the curtain of Time and summons thefigures from the shadows of the dead. He had never felt so sentimentalin his life. It was like being young again. And, at the same time, hebegan to bulk rather large in his own eyes with a certain spuriousimportance. He was a big man from the world of strife and action. Inthis little place of peaceful dreams would he, perhaps, not cutsomething of a figure?
"I'll try once more," he thought after a long pause, seizing the ironbell-rope, and was just about to pull it when a step sounded on thestone passage within, and the huge door slowly swung open.
A tall man with a rather severe cast of countenance stood facing him insilence.
"I must apologise--it is somewhat late," he began a trifle pompously,"but the fact is I am an old pupil. I have only just arrived and reallycould not restrain myself." His German seemed not quite so fluent asusual. "My interest is so great. I was here in '70."
The other opened the door wider and at once bowed him in with a smile ofgenuine welcome.
"I am Bruder Kalkmann," he said quietly in a deep voice. "I myself was amaster here about that time. It is a great pleasure always to welcome aformer pupil." He looked at him very keenly for a few seconds, and thenadded, "I think, too, it is splendid of you to come--very splendid."
"It is a very great pleasure," Harris replied, delighted with hisreception.
The dimly lighted corridor with its flooring of grey stone, and thefamiliar sound of a German voice echoing through it,--with the peculiarintonation the Brothers always used in speaking,--all combined to lifthim bodily, as it were, into the dream-atmosphere of long-forgottendays. He stepped gladly into the building and the door shut with thefamiliar thunder that completed the reconstruction of the past. Healmost felt the old sense of imprisonment, of aching nostalgia, ofhaving lost his liberty.
Harris sighed involuntarily and turned towards his host, who returnedhis smile faintly and then led the way down the corridor.
"The boys have retired," he explained, "and, as you remember, we keepearly hours here. But, at least, you will join us for a little while inthe _Bruderstube_ and enjoy a cup of coffee." This was precisely whatthe silk merchant had hoped, and he accepted with an alacrity that heintended to be tempered by graciousness. "And to-morrow," continued theBruder, "you must come and spend a whole day with us. You may even findacquaintances, for several pupils of your day have come back here asmasters."
For one brief second there passed into the man's eyes a look that madethe visitor start. But it vanished as quickly as it came. It wasimpossible to define. Harris convinced himself it was the effect of ashadow cast by the lamp they had just passed on the wall. He dismissedit from his mind.
"You are very kind, I'm sure," he said politely. "It is perhaps agreater pleasure to me than you can imagine to see the place again.Ah,"--he stopped short opposite a door with the upper half of glass andpeered in--"surely there is one of the music rooms where I used topractise the violin. How it comes back to me after all these years!"
Bruder Kalkmann stopped indulgently, smiling, to allow his guest amoment's inspection.
"You still have the boys' orchestra? I remember I used to play 'zweiteGeige' in it. Bruder Schliemann conducted at the piano. Dear me, I cansee him now with his long black hair and--and--" He stopped abruptly.Again the odd, dark look passed over the stern face of his companion.For an instant it seemed curiously familiar.
"We still keep up the pupils' orchestra," he said, "but BruderSchliemann, I am sorry to say--" he hesitated an instant, and thenadded, "Bruder Schliemann is dead."
"Indeed, indeed," said Harris quickly. "I am sorry to hear it." He wasconscious of a faint feeling of distress, but whether it arose from thenews of his old music teacher's death, or--from something else--he couldnot quite determine. He gazed down the corridor that lost itself amongshadows. In the street and village everything had seemed so much smallerthan he remembered, but here, inside the school building, everythingseemed so much bigger. The corridor was loftier and longer, morespacious and vast, than the mental picture he had preserved. Histhoughts wandered dreamily for an instant.
He glanced up and saw the face of the Bruder watching him with a smileof patient indulgence.
"Your memories possess you," he observed gently, and the stern lookpassed into something almost pitying.
"You are right," returned the man of silk, "they do. This was the mostwonderful period of my whole life in a sense. At the time I hatedit--" He hesitated, not wishing to hurt the Brother's feelings.
"According to English ideas it seemed strict, of course," the other saidpersuasively, so that he went on.
"--Yes, partly that; and partly the ceaseless nostalgia, and thesolitude which came from never being really alone. In English schoolsthe boys enjoy peculiar freedom, you know."
Bruder Kalkmann, he saw, was listening intently.
"But it produced one result that I have never wholly lost," hecontinued self-consciously, "and am grateful for."
"_Ach! Wie so, denn?_"
"The constant inner pain threw me headlong into your religious life, sothat the whole force of my being seemed to project itself towards thesearch for a deeper satisfaction--a real resting-place for the soul.During my two years here I yearned for God in my boyish way as perhaps Ihave never yearned for anything since. Moreover, I have never quite lostthat sense of peace and inward joy which accompanied the search. I cannever quite forget this scho
ol and the deep things it taught me."
He paused at the end of his long speech, and a brief silence fellbetween them. He feared he had said too much, or expressed himselfclumsily in the foreign language, and when Bruder Kalkmann laid a handupon his shoulder, he gave a little involuntary start.
"So that my memories perhaps do possess me rather strongly," he addedapologetically; "and this long corridor, these rooms, that barred andgloomy front door, all touch chords that--that--" His German failedhim and he glanced at his companion with an explanatory smile andgesture. But the Brother had removed the hand from his shoulder and wasstanding with his back to him, looking down the passage.
"Naturally, naturally so," he said hastily without turning