Gossamer Cord

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 disappointing, 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.