Gossamer Cord Read online

  “It is good that you come here,” said one of the young men whose name we discovered was Franz. The other was Ludwig.

  “It is good that you see we are now a prosperous people.”

  We waited for him to go on.

  “We have suffered much. After the war…there was a harsh treaty. Oh, we suffered. But no more. We shall be great again.”

  “But you are,” said Dorabella, giving one of her most appealing smiles.

  Both young men then regarded her with interest. “You have seen this?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dorabella.

  “And you will go home and tell your people Germany is great again?”

  Dorabella said: “Oh, yes.” Although I knew she had no intention of doing so and certainly no one would have been interested if she had.

  “We are proud,” said Ludwig, “because it was here in Munich that our Führer made his great attempt to lead our nation.”

  “What year was that?” asked Edward.

  “1923,” answered Franz. “It was the Putsch in the beer cellar.”

  “Beer cellar!” cried Dorabella. “Can we go to a beer cellar?”

  Neither of the young men seemed to hear that. They were staring silently ahead, their faces flushed with zeal.

  “It failed and he went to prison,” said Franz.

  “But that time was not wasted,” added his friend. “For out of it came Mein Kampf.”

  “And then when Hindenburg died he became Chancellor. And then Dictator…and everything was different,” said the other.

  “Oh, good,” murmured Dorabella. “That must have been nice.” There was a touch of asperity in her voice. She was a little bored by these too earnest young men. However, there was a very friendly atmosphere at the table and the food was good.

  We felt distinctly refreshed and spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the Peterskirche—one of the oldest churches I had ever seen. After that we sat outside a restaurant, drank coffee, and ate some delicious cakes. It was interesting to watch the people strolling by. Edward said we must not stay out too long. We had to think of the journey tomorrow, for we should have to rise early.

  We went back to our hotel. Franz and Ludwig were no longer there. We dined and returned to our rooms where Dorabella and I talked of the day’s events until we dropped off to sleep.

  We were greatly looking forward to arriving in Regenshaven.

  As we stepped from the train, I felt I was in an enchanted land. We had traveled through mountainous country of pine-covered slopes with waterfalls and little rivulets which glittered in the sunshine. We had seen the occasional little village with tall brick buildings and cobbled streets, which reminded me of illustrations in Grimm’s Fairy Tales from my childhood.

  Kurt was waiting to greet us which he did with such joy and made us all feel like honored guests.

  “How glad I am that you have come!” he said. “Ach, but it is a long journey and so good of you to make it to see us.”

  “We thought it was worth it,” replied Edward lightly. “Kurt. It is good to see you.”

  “And the young ladies are here…Violetta…Dorabella.”

  “We are here,” cried Dorabella. “You don’t think we should have let Edward come without us, surely?”

  “They are all eager to meet you. My family…I mean,” said Kurt. “Come. We will waste no time. They are impatient. Is this the luggage?”

  Kurt took our bags and we went out of the station and settled into his waiting car. Then we drove through the pine-scented air.

  “It is beautiful!” I cried. “Everything I thought it would be.”

  And so it was. We were soon in the forest.

  “The schloss is five miles from the station,” Kurt told us.

  We looked about us eagerly and soon came to a small town, with its church and old belltower, its cobbled streets, and the square in which were the post office and a few shops. The small houses had clearly stood there for hundreds of years. One almost expected the Pied Piper to appear.

  The schloss was about a quarter of a mile out of the town, which I discovered was called Waldenburg. The road to it was slightly uphill. I gasped when I saw the schloss. In the afternoon light it was like another illustration from the fairytale books.

  It was a castle, yes, but a miniature one. There was a circular turret at each end and it was built of pale gray stone. I thought of a princess at one of the turret windows letting down her long fair hair to enable her lover to climb up to her. I could hear Dorabella’s voice: “It’s silly. He would have pulled it all out, and think how it would hurt!” But I was more romantically minded than she was, and I thought it was an example of true love to suffer for the joy of receiving one’s lover in the turret.

  I would have reminded her of this but there was no time, for standing at the door of this fascinating edifice was a group of people.

  Kurt shouted in German: “We’re here,” and they all clapped their hands.

  We got out of the car and were introduced to them. Edward they knew already, and greeted him with great pleasure. And Kurt presented them to us with that dignity with which I was beginning to become accustomed. There were his parents, his grandfather and grandmother, his brother Helmut and his sister Gretchen. Standing to one side were the servants—a man, two women, and a girl who, I guessed, would be much the same age as Dorabella and me.

  When the first formal introductions had been made, the welcome was very warm.

  We were shown to our rooms. Dorabella and I shared, which we were delighted to do. We stood at the window looking out on the forest where a faint mist was beginning to settle, giving the scene a mysterious aspect and, just for a moment, I felt a certain apprehension which made me shiver. That mist once again reminded me of the forest in the Grimm books, where evil was so often lurking.

  It was gone in a moment, for Dorabella hugged me suddenly—a habit she had when excited.

  “It is wonderful!” she cried. “I know it’s going to be fun. What did you think of Helmut?”

  “I am afraid it is too soon for me to have made an assessment. He seemed very pleasant.”

  Dorabella laughed at me. “You are such a pompous old darling, dear sister. I’m glad all that side of us went to you.”

  She often said that she and I were one person, really, and the vices and virtues which fell to the lot of most people at birth had been divided between us.

  However, on that occasion she did manage to disperse that mild feeling of uneasiness.

  I remember our first meal in the schloss inn. I recall going down the narrow spiral staircase to the dining room where we dined with the family, apart from the guests who were staying at the inn; and we had our meal after they had had theirs.

  It was a small dining room which looked out—as so many of the rooms did—on the forest. There were rugs on the wooden floor, and two stuffed heads of deer protruded from the walls on either side of the open fireplace.

  We discovered that long ago—before the unification of Germany, when the country had consisted of a number of small states—the schloss had been the hunting lodge of some baron, and the animals’ heads must have been put there then. One looked somewhat ferocious, the other scornfully resentful. They seemed to intrude into the peaceful atmosphere of the room. There were pictures, too, of the Brandt family which I later learned had been painted before the disastrous years of 1914 to 1918.

  It was a merry party. The language represented little problem. Dorabella and I had learned a smattering from our school lessons which was of some small help to us. Kurt and Edward were fairly good; and Kurt’s parents seemed to have acquired a little English, possibly through visitors to the schloss; and Helmut and Gretchen had some English, too. So the language problems which cropped up now and then only added to the merriment.

  It was a very pleasant evening.

  Dorabella and I discussed it when we were alone in our room.

  “It’s going to be fun,” said Dorabella. “Helmut is rather di
sappointing, though.”

  “You mean he has not responded to the allure of Miss Dorabella Denver?”

  “He’s a bit stodgy,” she said. “I can’t bear these intense people. Like those men in the hotel. Helmut doesn’t laugh much.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t see anything to laugh about, or it may be that he doesn’t feel it necessary to let everyone know what he is feeling.”

  “Tomorrow,” she went on, “we shall explore. It’s going to be interesting.”

  “I’m sure it will be…different from anything we have done before.”

  I went to the window and looked out. The mist had thickened. I could just see the outline of the nearest trees.

  “It looks exciting like that,” I said.

  Dorabella came to stand beside me.

  I went on: “Weird almost. Do you think so?”

  “It just looks like mist to me.”

  I found it difficult to turn away, and suddenly I saw a figure emerge from the schloss.

  Dorabella whispered: “It’s the maid.”

  “Else,” I murmured. “Yes, that’s her name. I wonder where she’s going. It must be nearly eleven.”

  Then we saw a man step out of the shadows. We could not see him clearly, but he was obviously not one of those whom we had seen in the schloss. He was tall and very fair. Else was caught up in his arms and for a few moments they clung together.

  Dorabella was giggling beside me.

  “He’s her lover,” she said.

  We watched them as, hand in hand, they slipped into one of the outhouses, which in the days of the baron may have been stables.

  We left the window. Dorabella got into her little bed and I got into mine.

  We did not sleep well that night, which was to be expected; and when I did dream it was of a fairy-tale kind of blue mist which turned into shapes of strange people, and the branches of the trees became long arms that stretched out to catch me.

  During the days which followed, we settled into the life of the schloss. I learned from Kurt’s mother that the inn was by no means full. They had at the moment only six people staying, and they considered that fairly good. Times had been bad, but they were in some respects getting better as the country became more prosperous.

  “It had a long way to come after the war,” said Kurt. “Now there are more visitors because people come from abroad…from England, America, and other parts of the world. But we have the Beer Garden and when the weather is not good customers come inside. We have the big room with the bar…it is from this that we make our living.”

  “We are grateful for this,” went on Kurt’s mother.

  She was a woman of great energy, and I was impressed by her devotion to her family. In fact, what struck me immediately was this attitude among them all. It was almost as though there was an element of fear in their feeling toward each other. It puzzled me.

  The grandfather was rather feeble and spent most of his time in his room reading the Scriptures. He would sit in his chair with a little black cap on his head and his lips would move as he said the words to himself.

  The grandmother would be in her chair, knitting most of the time. Among other things she made jerseys for the whole family. She told me that winters in the forest could be harsh.

  “We are so high,” she said. “Well above the sea…and the clouds come down and surround us.”

  She would croon to herself and Kurt told us that she lived in the past and seemed to be there more often than in the present.

  His parents were constantly working. The father was often in the forest. I had seen him felling trees, and logs were brought into the schloss from time to time on a long carriage-like contraption used for that purpose.

  There was a great deal to do in the schloss, and I guessed they could not afford much help.

  Helmut, that very serious young man, continued to be a disappointment to Dorabella. He showed no more interest in her than in Edward or me, though he was meticulously polite and considerate to us all, but equally so, and clearly he was unaware of Dorabella’s special charms—and that did not endear him to her.

  Gretchen was a charming girl—dark-haired, dark-eyed like the rest of the family—and I noticed that Edward’s eyes were often on her. I mentioned this to Dorabella; she shrugged her shoulders; she was not really interested in the romances of others.

  In a few days I felt we had been at the schloss for weeks. Kurt had driven us round so that we could see something of the countryside. Sometimes we descended to the lower slopes and walked among the spruce, silver fir, and beech; then we would make our way up to where the firs grew in abundance.

  We walked a great deal which meant much climbing, but it was the best way of seeing the country. It was delightful to visit the small hamlets. They were different from those at home and most seemed to have that Grimm-like quality. I always felt that there was something a little frightening about them. I was reminded of children lost among the trees and finding a gingerbread house or giants lurking in the undergrowth.

  I think these feelings were engendered by something I did not understand at the time. It was there in the schloss.

  What was it? Beneath all the bonhomie, the laughter, the merriment of the Beer Garden…and often in the bar where people came in from the villages around, sitting at tables drinking, often singing songs with beautifully haunting tunes, usually extolling the Fatherland.

  If I mentioned this to Edward and Dorabella I felt they would have laughed at me. They would say wasn’t I always fancying something? I told myself they were right. It was the forest atmosphere which moved me in some way.

  Dorabella and I quite often went out alone. We had taken to walking into the town and we found it particularly enjoyable to sit outside one of the coffee shops, drink our coffee, and partake in one of the fancy pastries which were really delicious. The waiter now knew us as “The English Young Ladies,” and he would chat a little to us when he served us. We used our boarding-school German with him which he seemed to like. Then we would watch the people walking by; and after an hour or so of this pleasant occupation, we would stroll back to the schloss.

  It was the beginning of our second week. It was a lovely day, slightly less warm than it had been, with the faintest touch of autumn in the air.

  As we sat there, a young man strolled past. He was tall and fair, with a marked jaunty air, so different from the rather earnest people we met so often. He had a very pleasant face and, as he went past, he glanced at us. It was not exactly a stare, but he certainly did not look away immediately. I was aware of Dorabella’s interest.

  He went on into the town.

  Dorabella said: “He looked different somehow.”

  “I think he is a visitor…I mean, not a local.”

  “I thought for a moment he was going to stop.”

  “Why on earth did you think that?”

  “He might have thought we were someone he knew.”

  “I am sure he thought nothing of the sort. In any case, he’s gone now.”

  “A pity. He was quite good-looking.”

  “Would you like another pastry?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Violetta, do you realize we shall soon be going home?”

  “We’ve another week.”

  “By the way the time flies, we shall soon be there.”

  “It has been fun, hasn’t it?”

  “H’m,” she said. She was alert suddenly.

  She was facing the street and I had my back to it. Her face creased into smiles.

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  “Don’t look round. He’s coming back.”

  “Who?”

  “That man.”

  “You mean…?”

  “The one who just went by.”

  She appeared to become very interested in her coffee cup. And then I saw him, for he had seated himself at a table close by.

  “Yes,” went on Dorabella, as though there had been no interruption. “It won’t be long now. I exp
ect the parents will be thinking that two weeks away from their beloved daughters is long enough.”

  As she talked it was clear to me that her attention was on that other table.

  Then suddenly the man rose and came toward us.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I couldn’t help hearing you were speaking English. It’s such a pleasure to meet one’s fellow countrymen in foreign lands, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” said Dorabella.

  “May I join you? One can’t shout across the tables. Are you on holiday?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Are you?”

  He nodded. “Walking,” he said.

  “Alone?” asked Dorabella.

  “I had a friend who was with me. He had to go back. I hesitated whether to go with him, but it was only for another week, so I thought I would stick it out.”

  “Have you walked far?”

  “Miles.”

  “And you have just arrived in this place?” asked Dorabella.

  “Three days ago. I thought I saw you before…having coffee here.”

  The waiter had approached and the young man ordered coffee, suggesting that we have another with him. Dorabella agreed at once.

  “This is a fascinating place,” I said. “And walking, you see the best of it.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “Have you walked much?”

  “A little.”

  “Are you staying in this town?”

  “No,” Dorabella told him. “In a little schloss about a quarter of a mile away…not exactly a hotel, but a sort of inn.” She waved her hand in the direction of the schloss.

  “I know it. Charming surroundings. How long have you been here?”

  “We are going at the end of the week. Then we shall have been here about fourteen days.”

  The coffee had arrived and the waiter smiled benignly to see us chatting together.

  “It is so good to be able to talk in English,” said the young man. “My German is somewhat inadequate.”

  “And so is ours,” said Dorabella. “But we have someone with us who is quite good.”

  “A friend?”

  “Well, a friend of the family. He is like a brother…only not really.”