What the Swallow Sang Part 8

The brilliant glow extended a long distance, thanks to the huge arched tin dish which the old man had fastened behind the lamp, and whose spotless brightness rivalled polished silver. This light had now burned seventy years, to the joy of s.h.i.+pmasters and fishermen and the honor of the worthy man who kindled it night after night at no one's bidding, but in simple obedience to the dictates of his own kind heart.

Seventy years, and probably more rather than less; no one had counted them. Ever since the oldest man in that neighborhood could remember, Cousin Boslaf had lived in the beach-house--was it strange that he should be a half-mythical personage to the younger generations? He almost seemed so to his own relatives in Dollan, among whom he lived; in whose society, at least, he spent many hours; whose joys and sorrows he shared in his quiet way, and to whom his history was known; at least Curt's father had known and related it, Gotthold could not remember the occasion, and whether he had told the boys or--what was more probable--communicated it to some friends over a bottle of wine, and the boys had secretly listened in some corner.

It was long since Gotthold had thought of this story, which reminded him of a time when many a beech-tree that now reared its stately head far above the wanderer f did not exist. But now it once more came back to his memory, down to the smallest details, which he really knew not whether he had heard at that time, imagined since, or now first learned from the rustling of the forest giants, and the murmur of the brook that accompanied his steps.

"When we were under the Swedish rule," so all the stories of those days began, there lived on the island two cousins named Wenhof--Adolf and Bogislaf--both equally young, equally strong and handsome, and equally in love with a charming young lady, whom her father would give only to a rich man, for the simple reason that he had nothing but his n.o.ble blood and the great estate of Dahlitz, which was loaded with debts to an amount exceeding its value. The two cousins, it is true, did not belong to the n.o.bility, but they had descended from a very good old family, and the Lord of Dahlitz would have made no objection to either, except the one he was unfortunately obliged to make to both, namely, that they were, if possible, poorer than himself. In fact, neither possessed anything except a good rifle with the hunting equipments belonging to it, and a pair of stout boots, whose thick soles crossed the thresholds of their many friends on the island, where they were everywhere welcome companions in the hunt or at the board. Of equal height, and almost similar cast of features, they also did everything alike, or so nearly alike that the hospitable, cheery land-owners saw one enter the courtyard no less gladly than the other, and were still better pleased when both appeared, which was almost always the case, for the two cousins loved each other much more warmly than most brothers, and as for their pa.s.sion for the beautiful Ulrica of Dahlitz, their hopes of possessing her were so small that it was not worth while to quarrel about it.

Just at that time something happened which at one blow completely altered their situation, or at least the situation of one of them.

A very wealthy and eccentric uncle in Sweden died, who, besides his property in that country, had an estate on the island to bequeath, namely, beautiful Dollan, which at that time included the forest down to the sea-coast, and all the land across the wide moor to the Schanzenberge. This estate he now left to the two cousins, or rather to one of them, for according to the singular wording of the will it was to go to the one whom a jury of six of his acquaintances should p.r.o.nounce the "best man." Everybody laughed when this strange condition was made known, and the cousins laughed too. But they soon became very serious when they considered that not only Dollan was at stake, but Ulrica von Dahlitz, whom her father would joyfully give in marriage to the owner of Dollan. It was strange to see the two cousins, who had hitherto been inseparable, now begin to take separate paths, and, when they could not avoid each other, measure each other with grave, questioning, almost hostile looks, which seemed to say: I am the better man.

In the bottom of his heart each was obliged to confess, and did acknowledge, that the matter was at least very doubtful; and so thought and said the six judges whom the two cousins had chosen, and whose decision they had promised to obey. But all six were blameless young men, who set about their difficult task very gravely and solemnly, and held long, very long consultations, during which immense quant.i.ties of good old red wine were drunk, and a vast number of pipes was smoked, until they at last came to the following conclusion, which was universally praised as a wise and perfectly suitable one.

The cousin who should best perform six tasks to be given by the judges, should be considered by them and the world the best man.

The cousins would now have been in a very unfortunate situation, if the judges had obtained their wisdom from any philosophical or learned book; but no one of them had even thought of such a thing. The best man, according to their standard, would be he who, in the first place, should be able in the presence of the judges, within forty-eight hours, to put a three-years-old stallion, which had never been mounted, through the four princ.i.p.al paces--the walk, the trot, the gallop, and the run; secondly, cross the moor of Dollan, from the manor-house to the old smithy, with a team of four fiery young horses, going at full gallop, on a certain line; thirdly, swim from the sh.o.r.e to a s.h.i.+p anch.o.r.ed a German mile away in the offing; fourthly, from sunset to sunrise--it was in June, and the nights were short--drink a dozen bottles of wine; and fifthly, during that time play Boston with three of the judges without making any great mistakes. But if, as was almost expected, the judges even then could not decide, the cousins were to have twelve shots with a rifle at a target placed at a distance of two hundred and fifty paces, and the one who could hit the centre most frequently should be "the best man," and the owner of Dollan.

This sixth and last trial was really a last resource, upon which the judges had decided very unwillingly; for every child knew that Bogislaf was not only the better shot of the two, but the best on the whole island; still the matter must be settled in some way, and as Adolf, perhaps hoping that he should win the prize before that test was reached, made no objection to number six, everything was decided and the contest could begin.

It began and continued as had been universally expected. The two young sons of Anak rode their horses, guided their carriages, swam their mile, drank their twelve bottles of wine, and played their Boston with such equal skill and faultlessness, that the most scrupulous eye could detect no difference in the merit of the performance, and with heavy hearts the judges were obliged to proceed to the last trial, whose result was not doubtful.

And heavy, heavy as a hundred-pound weight poor Adolf's heart might well have felt in his brave breast, when he appeared on the ground on the momentous day. He was very much depressed, and the secret encouragement of the judges, who wished him well, did not cheer him.

"It is all useless now," he murmured.

But, strangely enough, Bogislaf seemed no less moved, nay, even more agitated than his cousin. He was pale, his large blue eyes looked dim and sunken, and his particular friends noticed, to their horror, that when the cousins shook hands, as they always did before every contest, his hand--his strong brown hand--trembled like that of a timid girl.

The cousins, who were to fire alternately, drew lots; Adolf had the first shot. He was a long time in taking aim, raised and lowered his gun several times, and finally hit the last ring but one.

"I knew it beforehand," he said, covering his eyes, and would have liked to stop his ears; but he listened intently, and drew a long breath, when instead of the "centre" he expected, the number of the last ring on the target was mentioned, and repeated in a loud tone by one of the judges.

Was it possible? Well then, there was still hope. Adolf collected all his powers; he shot better and better, three, four, six, nine, and ten, and again six and ten; and Bogislaf always remained one ring behind him, neither more nor less--always one ring.

"He is playing with him, as a cat plays with a mouse," the judges said to each other after the first three shots had been fired.

But Bogislaf grew paler, and his hand trembled more and more violently at every trial, and only grew steady at the moment when he discharged the gun; but he was always one ring behind Adolf, and now came the last shot, the worst Adolf had made. In his terrible excitement he had just grazed the outer edge of the target; if Bogislaf now hit the centre, he would be the victor: the result of the long struggle, the magnificent estate, the beautiful bride--all, all depended upon that one shot.

Pale as death, Bogislaf stepped forward, but his hand no longer trembled; firmly, as if his arm and the gun were one, he took aim, the glittering barrel did not swerve a hair's breadth, and now the report crashed upon the stillness. "It has. .h.i.t the mark," said the judges.

The markers went forward and sought again and again, they could not find the bullet; the judges also went to the spot and searched and searched, but they could not find it either. The unprecedented, almost incredible thing had happened--Bogislaf had not even hit the target.

The judges looked at each other in perplexity, and for poor Bogislaf's sake scarcely ventured to utter what must be said. But Bogislaf went up to his cousin, who stood with downcast eyes, as if ashamed of his victory, seized his hand, and evidently wished to say something which did not escape his pale, quivering lips. But it could not have been a curse, for he fell sobbing on Adolf's neck, pressed him to his heart, then released him, and without uttering a word, strode away and disappeared.

He remained absent. Many supposed he had killed himself; others declared that he had buried himself in the northern part of Norway amid the ice and snow to hunt bears and wolves; and they were perhaps right.

At all events, he was not dead, but after an absence of several years suddenly appeared on the estate of a friend who had been one of the judges, and here his cousin Adolf and his young wife Ulrica met him--quite accidentally, for they had not heard of his return, and the young wife was so startled that she fell fainting on the floor, and was restored to consciousness with great difficulty. To be sure, she had always been one of those who believed Bogislaf dead, and had already had several discussions on the subject with her husband, who always a.s.serted the contrary. It was said that this was by no means the only point of difference between the husband and wife, and there were in truth many things which did not increase the happiness of the young pair. True, the extravagant old Lord of Dahlitz, who had sold his property to a Herr Brandow--Carl Brandow's great-grandfather--and then lived very contentedly on his son-in-law for several years, was now dead, but the daughter had inherited her father's expensive tastes, and Adolf was anything but a good economist.

This last quality certainly did not prevent him from doing what the simplest grat.i.tude required;--and therefore--in spite of his wife's opposition--he invited poor Bogislaf to visit him at Dollan and remain as long as possible. At first Bogislaf positively refused, and with good reason. The cause of the result of the shooting match had now transpired! It was known that the evening before the contest Ulrica had sent her cousin and most intimate friend, Emma von Dahlitz, a poor orphan who lived with her wealthy relatives, to Bogislaf with the message: she would never, never, though everybody should declare him to be the best man, accept him for her husband, but Adolf, whom she always had loved, and always should. Then Bogislaf, as he no longer had any hope of winning the girl he loved, generously resigned to his cousin a property which no longer had any charm for him.

He long refused to accept his fortunate cousin's invitation, but finally came--for only a week. But the days had become weeks, the weeks months, and the months years, so that this was now the fourth generation which had known old Bogislaf Wenhof, or, as he was commonly called, Cousin Boslaf, in the beach-house of Dollan. He had removed there at the end of the first week, after purchasing it, together with the few fields and meadows belonging to it, for a very small sum from the government, which had originally built it for a watch-house; but though the beach-house did not really belong to Dollan, but was Cousin Boslaf's own property, Cousin Boslaf clung to Dollan all the more closely, so closely that the constant intercourse had filled the heads of the people with all sorts of superst.i.tious fancies, in which the old man sometimes figured as the good, and sometimes the evil genius of Dollan, and especially the Wenhof family. Alas! even if he were the good genius, he had been unable to prevent the ruin of the house, or withhold the son of Adolf and Ulrica, who had many of the Dahlitz traits of character, from selling Dollan to the convent of St. Jurgen at the close of the preceding century, after which he was glad to remain as a tenant where he had once been master. Cousin Boslaf had not been able to prevent that, or any of the other things which had happened from that time to the present day.

"But what does this mean?" said Gotthold to himself. "How can one let his healthy brain become so bewildered by the rustling of the forest, the murmur of the stream, and these old tales! I believe the serpent has bewitched me with its cold glittering eyes, and I am still under its spell. But its reign is over now. There is the sea gleaming through the boughs, my own beloved, beautiful sea! Its fresh breath will cool my hot brow. And he, the old man who lives yonder, and who learned so early the meaning of the harsh word sacrifice; who renounced power, wealth, and woman's favor that he might not lose his own manhood, was probably the better and wiser man."

Still following the course of the stream, which, now that it was so near its mouth, grew more noisy and impatient, falling in many a miniature cascade as it hurried plas.h.i.+ng and murmuring down the ravine, overgrown with huge clumps of ferns and the most luxuriant gra.s.s, Gotthold, a few moments after, reached the sh.o.r.e. On the right hand, almost at the extreme point of the promontory, which, covered with large and small stones like the rest of the coast, ran out several hundred paces into the sea, stood Cousin Boslaf's house. The old flag, which Gotthold had remembered from his boyhood, still fluttered from the tall staff on the gable roof. It had originally been a Swedish banner, but in the course of years the wind and weather had so dimmed its colors, and made so many repairs necessary, that the authorities could not have taken umbrage at this relic of foreign rule, even if they had troubled themselves particularly about Cousin Boslaf's actions. This, however, they had never done, so the old flag fluttered and rustled and flapped merrily in the fresh breeze, which blew still stronger as Gotthold now stood before the low dwelling, built partly of unhewn stone from the sh.o.r.e, whose only door was on the side towards the land. The door was locked; he could not look into the little iron-barred windows on the right and left, which lighted the kitchen and store-room, for they were considerably above a man's height, close under the roof; and the strong iron shutters were put over the two larger windows in the front of the house, which faced the sea.

Evidently Cousin Boslaf was not at home.

"To be sure," said Gotthold, "after an absence of ten years we can't be surprised not to find a man who was eighty years old at the time we left him."

And yet he could not believe that the old man was dead. He had just been thinking of him so eagerly, seen him so distinctly in his mind's eye--the tall, slender figure, walking with long, regular strides, as he had so often beheld him. No, no, the old man belonged to the race of giants; he had surely outlived this little s.p.a.ce of time.

And then the house and its surroundings--the little front yard enclosed by a walk, the tiny garden bordered with sh.e.l.ls--did not look as if they had been left for any length of time. Everything was in order and painfully neat, as the old man used to keep it; the little bridge in the creek to which he fastened his boat had even been lately mended with new pieces of wood, carefully dovetailed together. But the boat had gone; undoubtedly cousin Boslaf had rowed out to sea in her. To be sure, it was not his custom, but the old man's habits might have altered during the last few years.

The afternoon was already far advanced; the walk through the ravine to the beach-house had occupied more time than Gotthold expected. He would wait for Cousin Boslaf an hour longer, and then return to the giant's grave, paint until sunset, claim the hospitality of the smithy for the night, and early the next morning--it was to be hoped with better success--seek out his old friend once more. Then he could reach Prora at noon, and after taking leave of the Wollnows, drive on with Jochen without delay. He had thought yesterday of finis.h.i.+ng the picture in Prora; but they would pa.s.s through the place to-morrow evening on their return from Pluggenhof, so Jochen had informed him, and he would not trust a second time to the chance which had saved him from meeting Carl Brandow that very morning.

The young man had thrown himself down upon the sh.o.r.e under the shadow of the beeches, which here extended to the very brink of the steep cliff. Accustomed as he had been on his sketching excursions to satisfy himself for a whole day with a piece of bread and a drink from his flask, he now felt no hunger; but he experienced far more fatigue than he had usually done after longer walks. As he lay there with the beeches rustling over his head, and the waves breaking on the stony sh.o.r.e beneath with their monotonous cadence, his lids gradually fell over eyes wearied by long gazing over the boundless waste of waters.

CHAPTER VIII.

A few hours later, Carl Brandow and Hinrich Scheel were riding over the moor from the smithy to Dollan, the same road which they had pa.s.sed over in the opposite direction not ten minutes before. They rode at a quick trot, the groom a few dozen paces behind his master, though not from any feeling of respect, and certainly not because he was worse mounted. On the contrary, his horse was a magnificent brown animal of the purest blood, far more valuable than his master's half-breed, so valuable in fact, that any pa.s.ser-by would have wondered how such a n.o.ble animal could be ridden upon such an ordinary occasion. But Hinrich Scheel was no ordinary rider; he noticed every movement of the horse upon the rough road as carefully as if he were training it upon a smooth race-course; not the smallest awkwardness was suffered to pa.s.s unnoticed; it had just been guilty of a trick for which it must be punished; and that was the reason why he had remained a little behind.

Suddenly Carl Brandow drew his rein, and half turning said, over his shoulder, "Are you perfectly sure you saw him?"

"I told you I pa.s.sed within a hundred paces of him," answered Hinrich Scheel sulkily; "and I had plenty of time to look at him too; I believe he stood up there an hour, as if he had taken root."

"But why did that scoundrel of a Jochen say just now that he didn't know where he was?"

"Perhaps he doesn't."

"Stuff and nonsense!"

They rode on a short distance side by side; the master staring gloomily straight before him, and the groom from time to time casting a sly glance at him from his squinting eyes. Then he urged his horse still nearer and said:

"Why should he know? I don't know why you are running after him as a cat chases a mouse."

"Bah!"

"Nor why you came back from Pluggenhof so soon, have ridden the horses half to death, and gave me a louis-d'or when I told you I had seen him."

"I'll give you six if you'll tell me where I can find him," cried Carl Brandow, turning eagerly in his saddle.

"Where you can find him? Why that's easy enough; with the old man in the beach-house yonder."

"Where I cannot seek him."

"Without having the old man send a bullet through your body. Six louis-d'or! I think I should wait a long time for the money. But I will tell you where you can find him without the gold, if you'll let me ride Brownlock across the bog."