Charlotte went away slowly, candle in hand. At her door she stopped and looked back. ‘It seems,’ she said, ‘that I have got that unfortunate man’s bed.’
So it was the Berlin gentleman who was making her restless.
‘And you,’ she went on, ‘have got the one his daughter was to have had.’
‘Is she alive?’ I asked sleepily.
‘Oh yes, she’s alive.’
‘Well, that was nice, anyway.’
‘I believe you are frightened,’ I murmured, as she still lingered.
‘Frightened? What of?’
‘The Berlin gentleman.’
‘Absurd,’ said Charlotte, and went away.
I was having a most cheerful dream in which I tried hard to remember the exact words Herbert Spencer uses about effete beliefs that, in the stole, still cling about the necks of priests, and, in gaiters, linger round the legs of bishops, and was repeating the words about the bishops in a rapture of enjoyment — and indeed it is a lovely sentence — when a sudden pause of fear came into my dream, and I felt that some one beside myself was in the room.
The dark to me has always been full of terrors. I can look back through my memories and find past years studded with horrible black nights on which I woke up and was afraid. Till I have lit a candle, how can I remember that I do not believe in ghosts, and in nameless hideousnesses infinitely more frightful than ghosts? But what courage is needed to sit up in all the solid, pressing blackness, and stretch out one defenceless hand into it to feel about for the matches, appalled by the echoing noises the search produces, cold with fear that the hand may touch something unknown and terrible. And so at Binz, dragged out of my pleasant dream to night and loneliness, I could not move for a moment for sheer extremity of fright. When I did, when I did put out a shaking hand to feel for the matches, the dread of years became a reality — I touched another hand. Now I think it was very wonderful of me not to scream. I suppose I did not dare. I don’t know how I managed it, petrified as I was with terror, but the next thing that happened was that I found myself under the bedclothes thinking things over. Whose hand had I touched? And what was it doing on my table? It was a nasty, cold hand, and it had clutched at mine as I tore it away. Oh — there it was, coming after me — it was feeling its way along the bedclothes — surely it was not real — it must be a nightmare — and that was why no sound came when I tried to shriek for Charlotte — but what a horrible nightmare — so very, very real — I could hear the hand sliding along the sheet to the corner where I was huddling — oh, why had I come to this frightful island? A gasp of helpless horror did get out, and instantly Charlotte’s voice whispered, ‘Be quiet. Don’t make a sound. There’s a man outside your window.’
At this my senses came back to me with a rush. ‘You’ve nearly killed me,’ I whispered, filling the whisper with as much hot indignation as it would hold. ‘If my heart had had anything the matter with it I would have died. Let me go — I want to light the candle. What does a man, a real living man, matter?’
Charlotte held me tighter. ‘Be quiet,’ she whispered, in an agony, it seemed, of fear. ‘Be quiet — he isn’t — he doesn’t look — I don’t think he is alive.’
‘What?’ I whispered.
‘Sh — sh — your window’s open — he only need put his leg over the sill to get in.’
‘But if he isn’t alive he can’t put his leg over sills,’ I whispered back incredulously. ‘He’s some poor drowned sailor washed ashore.’
‘Oh be quiet!’ implored Charlotte, burying her face on my shoulder; and having got over my own fright I marvelled at the abjectness of hers.
‘Let me go. I want to look at him,’ I said, trying to get away.
‘Sh — sh — don’t move — he’d hear — he is just outside — —’ And she clung to me in terror.
‘But how can he hear if he isn’t alive? Let me go — —’
‘No — no — he’s sitting there — just outside — he’s been sitting there for hours — and never moves — oh, it’s that man! — I know it is — I knew he’d come — —’
‘What man?’
‘Oh the dreadful, dreadful Berlin man who died — —’
‘My dear Charlotte,’ I expostulated, feeling now perfectly calm in the presence of such a collapse. ‘Let me go. I’ll look through the curtains so that he shall not see me, and I’ll soon tell you if he’s alive or not. Do you suppose I don’t know a live man when I see one?’
I wriggled out of her arms and crept with bare, silent feet to the window, and cautiously moving the curtains a slit apart peeped through. There certainly was a man outside, sitting on a rock exactly in front of my window, with his face to the sea. Clouds were passing slowly across the moon, and I waited for them to pass to see him more clearly. He never moved. And when the light did fall on him it fell on a well-clothed back with two shining buttons on it, — not the back of a burglar, and surely not the back of a ghost. In all my varied imaginings I had never yet imagined a ghost in buttons, and I refused to believe that I saw one then.
Back I crept to the cowering Charlotte. ‘It isn’t anybody who’s dead,’ I whispered cheerfully, ‘and I think he wants to paddle.’
‘Paddle?’ echoed Charlotte sitting up, the word seeming to restore her to her senses. ‘Why should he want to paddle in the middle of the night?’
‘Well, why not? It’s the only thing I can think of that makes you sit on rocks.’
Charlotte was so much recovered and so much relieved at finding herself recovered, that she gave a hysterical giggle. Instantly there was a slight noise outside, and the shadow of a man appeared on the curtains. We clung to each other in consternation.
‘Hedwig,’ whispered the man, pushing the curtains a little aside, and peering into the darkness of the room; ‘kleiner Schatz — endlich da? Lässt mich so lange warten — —’
He waited, uncertain, trying to see in. Charlotte grasped the situation quickest. ‘Hedwig is not here,’ she said with immense dignity, ‘and you should be ashamed of yourself, disturbing ladies in this manner. I must request you to go away at once, and to give me your name and address so that I may report you to the proper authorities. I shall not fail in my duty, which will be to make an example of you.’
‘That was admirably put,’ I remarked, going across to the window and shutting it, ‘only he didn’t stay to listen. Now we’ll light the candle.’
And looking out as I drew the curtains I saw the moonlight flash on flying buttons.
‘Who would have thought,’ I observed to Charlotte, who was standing in the middle of the room shaking with indignation,— ‘who would have thought that that very demure little Hedwig would be the cause of a night of terror for us?’
‘Who could have imagined her so depraved?’ said Charlotte wrathfully.
‘Well, we don’t know that she is.’
‘Doesn’t it look like it?’
‘Poor little thing.’
‘Poor little thing! What drivel is this?’
‘Oh I don’t know — we all want forgiving very badly, it seems to me — Hedwig not more than you and I. And we want it so much more badly than we want punishing, yet we are always getting punished and hardly ever getting forgiven.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Charlotte.
‘It isn’t very clear,’ I admitted.
THE SIXTH DAY
THE JAGDSCHLOSS
She was asleep next morning when I looked into her bedroom, so I shut the door softly, and charging Gertrud not to disturb her, went out for a walk. It was not quite eight and people had not got away from their coffee yet, so I had it to myself, the walk along the shore beneath the beeches, beside the flashing morning sea. The path runs along for a little close to the water at the foot of the steep beech-grown hill that shuts the west winds out of Binz — a hill steep enough and high enough to make him pant grievously who goes up it after dinner; then on the right comes a deep narrow cutting running up into the woods, cu
t, it seems, entirely out of smoothest, greenest moss, so completely are its sides covered with it. Standing midway up this cutting in the soft gloom of its green walls, with the branches of the beeches meeting far away above, and down at the bottom the sheet of shining water, I found absolutely the most silent bit of the world I have ever been in. The silence was wonderful. There seemed positively to be no sound at all. No sound came down from the beech leaves, and yet they were stirring; no sound came up from the water, not a ripple, not a splash; I heard no birds while I stood there, nor any hum of insects. It might have been the entrance to some holy place, so strange and solemn was the quiet; and looking from out of its shadows to the brightness shining at the upper end where the sun was flooding the bracken with happy morning radiance, I felt suddenly that my walk had ceased to be a common thing, and that I was going up into the temple of God to pray.
I know no surer way of shaking off the dreary crust formed about the soul by the trying to do one’s duty or the patient enduring of having somebody else’s duty done to one, than going out alone, either at the bright beginning of the day, when the earth is still unsoiled by the feet of the strenuous and only God is abroad; or in the evening, when the hush has come, out to the blessed stars, and looking up at them wonder at the meanness of the day just past, at the worthlessness of the things one has struggled for, at the folly of having been so angry, and so restless, and so much afraid. Nothing focusses life more exactly than a little while alone at night with the stars. What are perfunctory bedroom prayers hurried through in an atmosphere of blankets, to this deep abasement of the spirit before the majesty of heaven? And as a consecration of what should be yet one more happy day, of what value are those hasty morning devotions, disturbed by fears lest the coffee should be getting cold and that person, present in every household, whose property is always to reprove, be more than usually provoked, compared to going out into the freshness of the new day and thanking God deliberately under His own wide sky for having been so good to us? I know that when I had done my open-air Te Deum up there in the sun-flooded space among the shimmering bracken I went on my way with a lightheartedness never mine after indoor religious exercises. The forest was so gay that morning, so sparkling, so full of busy, happy creatures, it would have been a sorry heart that did not feel jolly in such society. In that all-pervading wholesomeness there was no room for repentance, no place for conscience-stricken beating of the breast; and indeed I think we waste a terrible amount of time repenting. The healthy attitude, the only reasonable one towards a fault made or a sin committed is surely a vigorous shake of one’s moral shoulders, vigorous enough to shake it off and out of remembrance. The sin itself was a sad waste of time and happiness, and absolutely no more should be wasted in lugubriously reflecting on it. Shall we, poor human beings at such a disadvantage from the first in the fight with Fate through the many weaknesses and ailments of our bodies, load our souls as well with an ever-growing burden of regret and penitence? Shall we let a weight of vivid memories break our hearts? How are we to get on with our living if we are continually dropping into sloughs of bitter and often unjust self-reproach? Every morning comes the light, and a fresh chance of doing better. Is it not the sheerest folly and ingratitude to let yesterday spoil the God-given to-day?
There had been a heavy dew, and the moss along the wayside was soaked with it, and the leaves of the slender young beeches sparkled with it, and the bracken bending over the path on either side left its wetness on my dress as I passed. Nowhere was there a single bit of gloom where you could sit down and be wretched. The very jays would have laughed you out of countenance if you had sat there looking sorrowful. Sometimes the path was narrow, and the trees shut out the sky; sometimes it led me into the hot sunshine of an open, forest-fringed space; once it took me along the side of a meadow sloping up on its distant side to more forest, with only a single row of great beeches between me and the heat and light dancing over the grass; and all the way I had squirrels for company, chattering and enjoying themselves as sensible squirrels living only in the present do; and larks over my head singing in careless ecstasy just because they had no idea they were probably bad larks with pasts; and lizards, down at my feet, motionless in the hot sun, quite unaware of how wicked it becomes to lie in the sun doing nothing directly you wear clothes and have consciences. As for the scent of the forest, he who has been in it early after a dewy night knows that, and the effect it has on the spirits of him who smells it; so I need not explain how happy I was and how invigorated as I climbed up a long hill where the wood was thick and cool, and coming out at the top found I had reached a place of turf and sunshine, with tables in the shade at the farther side, and in the middle, coffee-pot in hand, a waiter.
This waiter came as a shock. My thoughts had wandered quite into the opposite channel to the one that ends in waiters. There he stood, however, solitary and suggestive, in the middle of the sunny green, a crumpled waiter in regard to shirt-front, and not a waiter, I should say, of more than bi-weekly washings; but his eye was persuasive, steam came out of the spout of his coffee-pot, and out of his mouth as I walked towards him issued appropriate words about the weather. I had meant to go back to breakfast with Charlotte, and there was no reason at all why I should cross the green and walk straight up to the waiter; but there was that in his eye which made me feel that if I did not drink his coffee not only had I no business on the top of the hill but I was unspeakably base besides. So I sat down at one of the tables beneath the beeches — there were at least twelve tables, and only one other visitor, a man in spectacles — and the waiter produced a tablecloth that made me shiver, and poured me out a cup of coffee and brought me a roll of immense resistance — one of yesterday’s, I imagined, the roll cart from Binz not having had time yet to get up the hill. He fetched this roll from a pretty house with latticed windows standing on the side of the green, and he fixed me with his hungry eye and told me the house was an inn, and that it was not only ready but anxious to take me as a lodger for any period I might choose. I excused myself on the plea of its distance from the water. He said that precisely this distance was its charm. ‘The lady,’ he continued, with a wave of his coffee-pot that immediately caused a thin streak of steam to rise from the grass— ‘the lady can see for herself how idyllic is the situation.’
The lady murmured assent; and in order to avoid his hungry eye busied herself dividing her roll among some expectant fowls who, plainly used to the business, were crowding round her; so that the roll’s staleness, perhaps intentional, ended by being entirely to the good of the inn.
By the time the fowls were ready for more the waiter, who had nothing pressing on hand, had become a nuisance too great to be borne. I would have liked to sit there and rest in the shade, watching the clouds slowly appear above the tree-tops opposite and sail over my head and out of sight, but I could not because of the waiter. So I paid him, got up, once more firmly declined either to take or look at rooms at the inn, and wished him a good morning instinct with dignity and chill.
‘The lady will now of course visit the Jagdschloss,’ said the waiter, whipping out a bundle of tickets of admission.
‘The Jagdschloss?’ I repeated; and following the direction of his eyes I saw a building through the trees just behind where I had been sitting, on the top of a sharp ascent.
So that was where my walk had led me to. The guide-book devotes several animated pages to this Jagdschloss, or shooting lodge. It belongs to Prince Putbus. Its round tower, rising out of a green sea of wood, was a landmark with which I had soon grown familiar. Whenever you climb up a hill in Rügen to see the view, you see the Jagdschloss. Whichever way you drive, it is always the central feature of the landscape. If it isn’t anywhere else it is sure to be on the horizon. Only in some northern parts of the island does one get away from it, and even there probably a telescope used with skill would produce it at once. And here I was beneath its walls. Well, I had not intended going over it, and all I wanted at that moment was to get rid
of the waiter and go on with my walk. But it was easier to take a ticket than to refuse and hear him exclaim and protest; so I paid fifty pfennings, was given a slip of paper, and started climbing the extremely steep ascent.
The site was obviously chosen without the least reference to the legs or lungs of tourists. They arrive at the top warm and speechless, and sinking down on the steps between two wolves made of copper the first thing they do is to spend several minutes gasping. Then they ring a bell, give up their tickets and umbrellas, and are taken round in batches by an elderly person who manifestly thinks them poor things.
When I got to the top I found the other visitor, the man in spectacles, sitting on the steps getting his gasping done. Having finished mine before him, he being a man of bulk, I rang the bell. The elderly official, who had a singular talent for making one feel by a mere look what a worm one really is, appeared. ‘I cannot take each of you round separately,’ he said, pointing at the man still fighting for air on the bottom step, ‘or does your husband not intend to see the Schloss?’
‘My husband?’ I echoed, astonished.
‘Now, sir,’ he continued impatiently, addressing the back below, ‘are you coming or not?’
The man in spectacles made a great effort, caught hold of the convenient leg of one of the copper wolves, pulled himself on to his feet with its aid, and climbed slowly up the steps.
‘The public is requested not to touch the objects of art,’ snapped the custodian, glancing at the wolf’s leg to see if it had suffered.
The man in spectacles looked properly ashamed of his conduct; I felt ashamed of myself too, but only on the more general grounds of being such a worm; and together we silently followed the guide into the house, together gave up our tickets, and together laid our stick and sunshade side by side on a table.
A number was given to the man in spectacles.
‘And my number?’ I inquired politely.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 306
