A week later, at eight o'clock in the morning, I set out.
As usual I came on board at the last minute, and we had already reached the Albert Bridge when, after getting rid of my luggage, I began to look round. The town showed its characteristic profile; the beautiful towers over Brühls Terrace stood out well against the clear sky, while overhead it was misty, and in front of us rather dark. The air was chilly, so I unfastened my travelling plaid. As we steamed past the three castles the town could scarcely be seen, and on reaching Loschwitz, rain began to fall. That is to say, it did not exactly rain, but …
"Well, it is just drizzling a bit," said a stout "Dräsener" to his better half, who put her head out of the cabin door with an inquiring look.
When we stopped nearly opposite, at Blasewitz, the newcomers at once went down into the saloon, and the ladies disappeared from the soaked deck. The men also soon left, one after another. The dismal truth could not be hidden any longer—it was pouring!
I lit a cigar and went to the smoking-saloon, which was filled with people and fumes of tobacco. The weather was the only topic of conversation. A long-haired professor, who was taking his Frühschoppen, held forth, saying, that when, after such heat, rain began to fall at this period of the year, it would not be fine again until September. All this time the rain was pattering on the roof, and when it ceased to patter it began to splash. It became so gloomy that one felt almost blinded in the unnatural darkness. Through the cabin windows, over which the water was running, one could scarcely see the vine-terraces and gardens on the banks of the river.
When I had finished my cigar I went to the saloon, in which not a seat was to be found, and it was so stuffy that I did not feel inclined to bring a camp-stool there, but went out into the lobby, where the stairs led up to the deck. A young lady, with two little girls, had seated herself here. I took down a camp-stool from the pile and, well wrapped up in my plaid, placed myself just opposite the stairs.
The fresh, damp air coming down was pleasant, though it often brought a shower-bath, the drops of which remained clinging to the woollen plaid. The upper steps were dripping with water; a pool had collected in a corner of a black tarpaulin which was spread over some luggage on deck, and a miniature fountain kept spirting up from it.
The young lady, seated on the other side of the saloon door, took a little book from her bag, and was soon lost to all around her.
She did not, however, have much peace, for the smaller child, an overdressed little girl, with flaxen curls, began to cry, and though, in a way, it was appropriate to the situation, the governess had to pacify her. "Lisbeth wants to hear more," the bigger girl said, and the little one confirmed this suggestion by tearfully saying, "More about Peter! More about Peter!"
"Oh, for shame, to let the strange gentleman see you like this, Lisbeth!" the lady whispered. "Do you think he cares to hear about Peter?"
The little one sobbed, sucked her forefinger, and looked at me with large, discontented eyes. The look, which so clearly said, "Why can't he go away?" made me very uncomfortable. I felt an intruder, and feared to make matters difficult for the fair young governess, who very likely wished to be alone with her pupils.
I had just made up my mind to move, when she gave me a most humorous look—how humorous I suppose she hardly realised herself—a look which clearly said that my company was agreeable to her, though the reason was not a flattering one for me: she did not wish to tell "more about Peter." I smiled back in a way intended to tell her that I had grasped the situation. Then I made myself still more comfortable, and endured with great calmness the angry eyes of the disappointed little one. It was very pleasing to me to be able to do my pretty neighbour a service in so simple a manner.
For pretty, nay, even beautiful, she was, as I had meanwhile had opportunity to realise. Her face belonged to the square type; it was clearly cut, and, as she was a brunette, at first sight she had rather a southern appearance. But the nose was quite German, short, straight, and modest. The lips possessed a rare charm, for the outline and colouring—from nature's hand, of course—were in perfect harmony. It is often the case that lips are either only perfect in colour or in outline, or the two are not in harmony and therefore spoil one another; here they were perfection itself. As to the little round chin and the curve of the cheek, I had never seen anything so delicately moulded.
She appeared to be of middle height, and rather thin than otherwise. Her dress was not in the latest fashion, which pleased me, but what especially took my fancy was her head-gear. Horribly high-peaked hats, trimmed with artificial flowers, were in vogue that year, and in the saloon I had just had the opportunity of wondering at the lack of taste shown in this respect. She, however, wore a small, toque-shaped, straw hat, bound with blue velvet, and a silver-grey veil.
To wear a nice veil at a time when veils are out of fashion always shows good taste on the part of the lady, and a pardonable desire to please. I cannot imagine the adored one without a veil, this festive streamer on life's billows, always pointing the direction one is to follow, and always making the heart beat, though sometimes leading astray. Well, I am speaking as if I had already fallen in love, which I had not at the time, though when is one not liable to do so? The world of women is for us divided into two classes: the one with whom it is more or less possible to fall in love, and the other in which one feels as if in the society of men. This time I was surely enough in the society of the former class.
We had gone some distance before I had come to this conclusion, for I only now and then dared to glance at her. All the same, I looked perhaps more often than would be considered correct; at any rate I noticed that she blushed deeply, and bent still farther down over the book, which was by no means of a size to shield her.
This little dumpy book began to make me inquisitive, with the real, travelling, rainy-weather inquisitiveness, that may be aroused by any casual circumstance. Old German translations of Cooper and Walter Scott are usually of a similar size, and I had already judged her literature to belong to this respectable type, when a sudden turning of the leaves revealed that it belonged to an even more serious order—it was a pocket dictionary.
This discovery increased still more my interest in the girl, and I looked at her with a certain emotion, picturing how the stress of life must have forced her to accept one of those trying situations as governess, which require more accomplishments than have ever been found in one human being, and perhaps had obliged her to use every spare moment to add to her knowledge in the quickest and driest manner, forcing her daily to swallow a dose of vocabulary in natura, a bitter but strengthening mixture on her thorny path.
When so pretty an image of youthful maidenhood has hardship as a sombre background, it can but gain in brightness and relief. Had she been a spoilt young lady of fashion, who passed her time reading the usual library novel, she would not have been half so interesting to me.
Though this interest ought to have been unselfish enough to prevent me from disturbing her, I could not resist doing so in order to start a conversation. I am ashamed to confess that I could not accomplish my purpose any better than by walking twice up the cabin stairs in the hope that she would ask if the weather was clearing—which it was not at all. She never spoke, however, and so I was at my wit's end.
I had thought of and rejected several forms of introduction, when the smaller girl began to complain of the cold. The poor governess had no choice but to wrap her up in her own shawl. As I am myself sensitive to cold, I could sympathise with her in parting with the wrap, especially as I had noticed how contented she had looked when tightening it round her arms and pushing her little chin between the soft folds.
I felt that my time had now come, and courteously offered her my plaid.
As I expected, she politely refused it. "You will need it yourself," she said, "and may catch cold."
I could not possibly deny this, as I was already troubled with a cold in my head, which had made me sneeze twice so furiously that the little girl had been frightened, and the bigger one had, only with an effort, restrained herself from laughing. So I had no other way out of the difficulty than to say I was going to the smoking-saloon and should not require the plaid.
Then the governess expressed a hope that she was not preventing me from smoking, to which I replied that I would on no account annoy her by doing so. On this point I remained obdurate, and thus affected a consideration that was foreign to me. I added that I wanted to move because the air had become rather chilly; and so I succeeded in retiring, leaving behind me my plaid as—sans comparaison—Joseph his coat.
Seated again on the oilcloth-covered bench in the little stuffy smoking-saloon, where I had lit my cigar and ordered a glass of beer, I could not hide from myself the fact that my first attempt at an introduction had not been very successful, inasmuch as it had forced me to retire. Had I been bolder I might have managed so that we had shared the plaid, or, if this was impossible, I might have put the little girl next to me and covered her up with my own plaid. In short, I had acted like a fool, and was the more annoyed as my former place was much more agreeable, and I already began to feel symptoms of a headache.
The boat gave a bump and then came to a standstill. Overhead they were dragging along boxes and trunks. We had reached Pirna. I looked apathetically at the small houses of the town, with the many green trees, and the tent-like roof of the lofty church, but with more interest at its Acropolis, Sonnenstein, which had at one time been a fortress, and was now a large lunatic asylum. The brush of Canaletto has often glorified this picture, but always in a better light. As if nature wished to relieve the gloom, a gleam of light suddenly fell on the turrets of the castle.
Now when I recall the scene, it appears to me as if a finger from Heaven had pointed out the building in order to attract my attention and to fix in my heart a foreboding of the feelings with which I should afterwards regard it, and with which I, at this moment, see it with my spiritual eye until my bodily eye grows dim with tears, and I am forced to lay down my pen. At that time nothing suggested itself to me but the glad sign of clearing weather. Gradually the light increased and spread, as walls and turrets began apparently to move and slowly glide to the right; I even faintly saw a patch of blue sky, and before the roof of the church down in the town entirely disappeared, I could see a dull, leaden hue on its steep slope. But again the rain washed down the window.
As we gradually came into the sandstone region, the rain abated. The smoking-saloon's puffing inhabitants disappeared, one by one, and were heard tramping overhead.
I went up also. It was raining rather heavily, the drops glittering like pearls in the hazy light, but as the clouds overhead were beginning to disappear, it was difficult to understand why the rain continued.
The stone walls of the old lower quarries, which here are a reddish-brown, seemed to be varnished, and, from the undulating bank on the right, the tree-tops of a pale green forest shone through the rainy mist. The rain, that for a moment had stopped, grew heavier again, though blue sky could be seen through the clouds.
I went down the cabin stairs and found my little party still in the lobby. The governess was no longer reading, nor was she telling tales, for her little tormentor was sleeping peacefully. This time I did not wait for the question, "Is it clearing?" but said at once that it was likely to be fine. In reply she smiled cheerfully, and thanked me for the use of the plaid, which she began carefully to fold up, and, as it was a large one, I had to help her, and succeeded in making her laugh at my awkwardness. There was just room enough to put it out to its full length, after which we manœuvred towards each other in the accustomed manner until our hands met. Before I could say a word, she had, with a hurried "thank you," rushed up the stairs, leaving the bigger child to wake up the smaller one.
The moist, shining deck, where one could not yet sit on the benches, was soon overcrowded with passengers. A few drops only glittered through the air, which was quite damp and warm; above, the sky was blue, the river valley was still filled with a light moisture, and the woods on the rocky terraces steamed, as if each pine-top was a little chimney, from which a blue smoke curled up and dissolved itself in the sunshine.
Ahead the glare of the river was almost blinding. At the foot of the perpendicular rocks of the Bastei, a few houses of Rathen could already be seen, and behind them a strange mass of wildly torn crags—the Gamrig-stone, which I had noticed from my window.
I looked for my small piece of luggage, and found that it had been kept quite dry by a tarpaulin. Being thus occupied, I had not had time to look for my beautiful travelling companion, before I heard the shout—"Rathen, am steuer absteigen," and I was busy forcing my way sternwards with my baggage. But when I had arrived there I saw, to my great delight, the grey veil flying foremost in the row of people, and soon after the governess passed over the gangway with her little pupils.
Before I could engage a porter, both she and the children had disappeared from view.