Читать книгу Through Night to Light - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 4

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The sun hung glaring red near the horizon. In the valleys of the mountain ranges dark-blue shadows were gathering, while high on the forest-crowned tops the warm evening light was still aglow. The trees were gorgeous in their gay autumn livery, but in this part of the mountain dark forests of sombre evergreens covered the narrow ravines up and down, and all the swelling heights.

On the turnpike which led in manifold windings towards the main ridge of the mountains, and was lined on both sides with unbroken rows of dwarf fruit-trees, an old-fashioned carriage was slowly making its way. It was one of those broad but clumsy vehicles, drawn by two raw-boned, broken-kneed horses, and carefully provided with a huge drag-chain, which are hired in the cities for a few days' excursion into the mountains. The horses lagged, with drooping heads, heavily in their harness, and labored painfully step by step up the hill, for the road was steep and the carriage heavy. The driver encouraged them from time to time with a friendly Gee, bay! up, sorrel! as he walked slowly by their side, and the two gentlemen who had employed him for some days had gotten out at the foot of the mountain and were leisurely following at some distance behind him.

They were a couple of young men, evidently belonging to the best classes of society, that is, to the middle classes, in which intelligence and culture are nowadays almost exclusively found. They were both tall and showed the slight build and the elasticity belonging to their years. One, the smaller one, whose mouth and cheeks were nearly hid under a close, deep-black beard, would probably have been thought the more interesting of the two, as his finely-cut features, full of intelligence, were sure to please the more careful observer, and yet he was neither as tall nor as handsome as his companion, who at once attracted the eyes of all fair maidens and matrons in the towns and villages through which they had passed.

The two young men had for a time walked on in silence, separated as they were by the whole breadth of the turnpike, which was here covered with small broken stones, to the despair of horses and foot-passengers. Now, when they had passed the bad places, they approached each other again, and the one with the black beard put his hand in a kindly manner on the other's shoulder and said affectionately: "Eh bien, Oswald, why so silent?"

"I return your question," replied the latter, turning his beautiful, earnest eyes towards his companion.

"I enjoy in full draughts the glory of this evening's landscape," said Doctor Braun; "and enjoyment, you know, is silent, because the very pleasure is business enough, and leaves us no leisure for talking. But tell me, is it not a wonderful country, this Thuringia? Is it not worthy to be the heart of Germany, and thus the heart of the heart of our continent, in fact of the inhabited globe? Stop a moment where you are; we have just here a view which would be unique if there were not thousands and thousands like it in these lovely mountains. There is the valley, which we have just left! you can now follow easily the meandering course of the willow-fringed brook through the meadows. There is the village, a dirty place when seen near by, but now how beautiful it is, half veiled by its gay cloak of trees, and the blue columns of smoke, which rise straight up from the chimneys, and gradually dissolve on the sides of the mountains into blue, transparent clouds. And now these beautiful heights with their evergreens! how they rise one behind the other with their deep coloring. And now, here to our left, the glimpse of the blue mountains which we crossed this morning. And, above all, this marvellously fair sky, clear and deep and unfathomable, like the eye of some one we love. Oh, there is something divine in these outlines and these lights. They are surely intended to be more than a mere pleasure for the eye, or even a study for the painter: they are meant to comfort us and to admonish us. A glance at the enchanting face of our mother nature puts our wild hearts to sleep, makes us forget the eccentric character of our so-called culture, brings us back to the first harmony of the soul, and awakens and revives in us the conviction that everything true, beautiful, and noble, is infinitely simple, and that the well of contentment gushes forth at the bidding of every one who seeks it with a pure heart."

While Doctor Braun had spoken these words in his usual animated and impressive manner, Oswald had looked with sad eyes into the far distance. Now, when his companion ceased, he said--an ironical smile playing around his lips--

"Are you quite sure of that? And suppose it were so, who will blame the unfortunate man whose heart is not pure, who is cursed with blindness, and never sees the well of contentment? We shall meet one of these unfortunate men to-night. If you will open his closed eyes and restore to him the purity of his heart, I will worship you as a god."

Doctor Braun seemed to be much affected by these words, which had towards the end assumed a passionate tone of bitterness. He was silent for a few moments while they ascended the mountain, and then he said,

"I thought the journey would have calmed you and made you more cheerful, Oswald. I begin to doubt my professional skill when I see that the old dreams are as powerful as ever in you. You seemed to be almost cured of the fatal desire to sit down, like Heine's young man, by the sea coast, and to ask the restless waves for an answer to the painful old riddles of life, and now----"

"Now I am once more bored with the old complaint! No, Franz, I will not bring disgrace upon your mental cure and try to find the world as beautiful and reasonable as you do. That was only a recollection of the past. Is it not natural, is it not quite intelligible, that it should turn up just now, when we approach the end of our pilgrimage, and I am about once more to meet face to face the noble, unfortunate man to whom I owe so much, and that after an interval during which so much, so very much, has changed for him and for myself! I have followed your advice faithfully, as well as I could. I have let the past bury the past; I have practised industriously the art of forgetting, and I have sent the very shadows of the departed back to Hades, when they became troublesome. But here comes the form of a living man who is dead, of a dead man who still lives, and I find neither in my mind nor in my heart the magic words which will lay this spirit, whom I reverence, whom I mourn with tears, like the others."

"Then let us turn back," said Doctor Braun, with great vivacity. "If you do not feel the strength in you to maintain the position which you have yourself chosen, against every objection and every authority, it would be madness to expose yourself to such danger. Let us turn back; it is time yet."

"No," said Oswald, "that would be both cowardly and foolish. We do not overcome danger by avoiding it. I must see Berger and speak to him. This interview must be the test of the problem that has occupied us these four weeks. Either I recover myself from my own insanity by seeing this madman, or----"

"There is no or," cried Franz. "Really, when I hear you talk so, Oswald, I have a great mind to let you starve and thirst till you come again to your senses, or consent to do honor to reason. You are an enigmatical man, a thoroughly problematic character. There are incongruities in your character which I have not yet learnt to explain, in spite of our long intimacy. Natural disposition and education, which jointly make the man, must in your case have been most strangely intermingled. I have so far always avoided speaking of your early youth, because I felt a natural reluctance to inquire after what you evidently did not care to reveal. But my friendship for you is greater than such considerations, which are after all of little account between such intimate friends as we are. What do you say, Oswald, while the sun is gloriously setting behind those mountains, and our poor horses are painfully dragging themselves up the hill, you might tell me something about your early years--much or little, as you are disposed. Will you do it?"

"Willingly," replied Oswald. "I also have been thinking much of my youth in these last days. If one is engaged in settling his affairs, as I am now doing, at a certain epoch of one's life, it is almost indispensable to trace that life back to the beginning. It is true you are the first man, and perhaps the only one, whom I could permit to look into those dark portions of my existence; but I will do it."

"I shall be all the more attentive," replied Doctor Braun.