There aren't really chapters per se in the book, but there are sections. Each one starts with a drop cap:
Here's the entirety of the first chapter. As in the monthly posts, the italicized words and phrases are those that I'm unsure about.
What had not happened for a long time in Reckenstein happened today: someone was having a party. Edith the only daughter of the old Reckenstein citizen, who for five years had with circumspection and loyalty replaced his early departed wife for him in house and yard, began her twenty-first birthday. The Reckenstein citizen had never been for having the party; for him life’s sense and happiness lay in his monotony. This time he made an exception; it was from him that the suggestion for this celebration came.
Small was the circle of the invited: from the neighborhood, Harro von Ubitzsch, lean, serious aloof, with a small wife who delighted in empty chatter; from farther away, Dr. Werner Stoltzmann, the first mayor of Rodenburg, who had been city treasurer for a short time in Königsberg, and who had - for their blossoming city and not easy administration - won the Rodenburg city council to count on him with pride to action. He was still young and of outspoken talent, one whose consciousness of himself was - for one in his thirty-fourth year - stamped very surely in character and appearance, which for him would be laid out from some sides as arrogance and self-importance. However, those who knew him more closely, like the Reckenstein citizen and his daughter, knew that at heart he was humble and modest. But the life and the great publicity, in this it was tasked to him so early, to have liked to have taught him, that in this world with such virtues, not many were to begin. His wife showed the compensating opposite, a tall brunette with red, round,
---1---
soft cheeks; laughing eyes; and a boldly-made nose with very thin, finely-drawn wings that - when she spoke - quietly shook. Coming from an old Rhenish officer’s family, Frau Lisa quickly settled herself by virtue of excellent upbringing into the stiffer north German relations, and through her natural, warm-hearted nature, quickly won the hearts of all the Rodenburg citizens and also the hearts of those who were still temporarily faced with deferring to their husbands.
Edith, more serious but as life-affirming as she, was tightly befriended to her of a Genevan pension year; now the contact, when she found herself here again one day, would preferably maintain, although one had a three-hour railroad journey to Reckenstein and both men appear further separated through the differences of age and attitude.
For the early season the day had been exceptionally hot. When one settled one’s self to supper in the large dining room, the windows and both wings of the old oak doors that led out to the garden veranda remain opened. Although the darkness had not yet arrived, one had lit the candles on the enormous silver candelabra that - inherited from the ancestors - belonged to the most beautiful pieces of the Reckenstein house-treasure. In the mild draft the flickering light grasped her there with long fingers over the spring flowers that - stunning and fragrant - adorned the table. However, the gradually duller and twilight-still becoming evening light pierced the windows and the door. And if the conversation once fell silent, one heard from outside the song of a nightingale in wonderful tones, one minute jubilant, the next sighing.
---2---
But now it broke off, from a loud sound that shrilly cut off his soft melodies, brought to silence. Dr. Stoltzmann had knocked on his glass and rose to his feet.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in his somewhat hard - but not sparing melodiousness - way of speaking, “You know that I am more a man of objective language than of well-cut table-aphorisms. However, the friendly position that we took up for our host - and particularly my wife took up for the daughter of his house - drives me today together in her name to offer up our congratulations to Miss Edith in this circle of chosen friends. It is the day on which she” - he took an approach to be humorous, something at which he never particularly succeeded - “steps out of her children’s shoes and will be received under the adults. This event will change little in her external life-relationships. And that is good; the permanently-at-home and native woman who is rooted in the home and active in it is for me the strongest and most efficient. We are glad that our youthful hostess found here in her beautiful, East Prussian home, which for a series of years I have also been proud and happy to call mine, a field of rich efficacy and abundance-bringing work on the clod of her ancestors. That she have her activity fulfilled - this that survives her together in those lucky narrow and width, as she fulfilled them to the welfare of her father, his righteous girl, and all people who work in Reckenstein, until now with her sense full of the joys of life: that is my wish for her birthdays. Then I ask you to raise your glasses with me and let them crash in a cheerful and strong huzzah for Miss Edith von Barrnhoff!”
---3---
“Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!” it rang from against the company at the table. But it was a dull, almost distracted echo. Before the last saying of the speakers had found no more attention, a different sound had mixed itself into them, first from the distance, then coming closer and closer: the sound of horseshoes, that hit the road of the approach with a hurrying trot, and now - “That is really the limit!” shouted the Reckenstein citizen and with his face burning with anger jumped up from his chair. “They’re riding in my garden!”
“In our garden?” Edith now also asked. “That is outrageous!”
But before she or her father could step out into the open, over the small thorn-hedge, placed to separate the garden from the yard, in a short gallop, two horsemen in the smart officer’s uniform of the cuirassiers had galloped over the path, raked with more special care in honor of the present day, and suddenly stopped the horses, dropping with sweat, directly in front of the wood steps that lead up to the garden veranda. And still not enough, now with some doing they forced the well-practiced horses up the small steps, and before the society - who had without exception risen from the cosy evening table, recovered from their astonishment - they stood with their horses up on the veranda. “Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!” they shouted, with the right arm raised, ten times as powerful than even the whole table company had first managed it, and once again: “Huzzah for the birthday girl!”
That all was the work of a moment; it had some so quickly and unexpectedly that no one knew how it actually happened and what this inexplicable invasion was supposed to mean.
---4---
“Fritz Warsow!” one heard Edith’s bright voice then, and, bursting out in a merry, happy laugh, she held out her hand toward one of the two riders. That one had already dismounted, greeted, and returned her heartfelt handshakes. Then he walked up to the old Reckenstein citizen: “Pardon this ambush, major, but I had to win my wager. And allow me to introduce to you and to the ladies and gentlemen, my comrade, Mr. von Uechteritz, who has accompanied me as a flawless witness and to whom I have often praised your hospitality.”
That one also had long since gotten out of the saddle; a stable boy, who came running up, received the steaming horses and led them into the stable. “However able to run down and to feed well, they have achieved something!” Fritz Warsow shouted after him and proceeded with his comrade to a room to let, in order to prepare himself for the table after the difficult ride.
Very soon they turned back and took the places cleared away for them, Mr. von Uechteritz between the two orphaned owner’s daughters, Fritz Warsow between Edith and Mrs. Stoltzmann.
“But your wager, captain!” shouted the Reckenstein citizen from the opposite side of the table. “Edith never told me a word about it.”
“I had completely forgotten it,” this one retorted.
“Yes, your wager!” it rang from several sides over to him.
“A year ago I had bet with Ms. von Barrnhof, as I had forgotten her birthday in an irresponsible way, that at the next recurrence of this day I would be there, even if I had to ride the distance from my garrison
---5---
into your dining hall.”
“And have won brilliantly!” shouted the fiery mayor’s wife, and her cheeks blossomed like the red carnations on her breast. Such an adventure and rider-trick, that was to her liking! What she had still wished and what she was actually missing was that Fritz Warsow had not literally fought out his wager and had galloped into the middle of the dining room with his comrade. And had they ridden the whole table into the ground and floor besides! The falling table and the jangling pieces of broken glass - it would have been a proper Rhenish carnival, and that was the only thing that she had by all acculturation and settling-in been without in the sober north and had not pardoned this up to present days.
But the old Reckenstein citizen also smiled contentedly to himself there. He liked the bit. He had always liked Fritz. He himself had been a soldier with body and soul, and he had taken part in all practices more than ten years ago. Then he had had to stop. But he had been awarded the title “major” and was proud of it. “And when it comes down to it, I am the first who takes part - against the Russians the best!” he was in the habit to say.
“How long have you been en route, captain?” Frau Lisa turned herself anew to Fritz, and her cheerful eye full of pleasure smiled at him.
“Eight hours, madam, not including the short midday rest. But in the end we have really ridden like the devil; I don’t know whether the hunger or the longing drove us.”
---6---
Edith knew him otherwise only seriously, so much the more she liked his funny nature and the fresh humor that suited him well. In the eyes, he was not a falling phenomenon, rather of stocky, almost small figure, but in his face was a trait of strength and energy, and his gaze was both clever and good.
Now Mrs. von Ubitzsch pulled him into a very thorough interrogation. Patiently, he withstood her a while, then he broke off a little abruptly and took part in the funny banter that his friend Uechteritz had started up with two young landed ladies from the neighborhood. But with little enthusiasm; he liked pretty girls, but the actual society and the light tone that it required was not his thing. The strength and masculinity of his personality combined with a certain timidity, during which he became a difficult gentleman.
It had become quieter at the table. From the garden sounded, not as loud and swelling as before, but still with a sweet euphony, the music of the bird that sang the hymn of love and courtly love. Was it jubilation or sadness?
One had not sat for long at the table; the garden there outside tempted. /\/\ Fritz Warsow went to Frau Lisa’s side. The warm air shook in the fragrance of the spring flowers, and a little of the moon was already there: a very thin crescent, it hung pallid and milk-white over the jagged tops of the trees. Something safe and calm went out from the retiring day, and the sky was a play of glowing and fading colors. From the courtyard sounded the low of the cows and also now and then out of the stables the whinny of a horse. Everything was silence and peace.
---7---
“Only in the country can one have such a thing,” said Fritz Warsow, and with a sigh of
release and relief, this came out of a genuine heart: “Here one is really a man again!”
Frau Lisa was not completely of his opinion; she also loved the country, but she loved it as a person who has not grown close with it: more from a distance, like a pleasant play that one watches for a few hours. But in the soul one is not gripped and deeply moved by it; of his loosened secrets and his deep creative power one has never discovered something, and his breath has not penetrated a heart. She did not contradict, yet she took the next real opportunity to sing in her lovely eloquence a song of praise to the city, that the active powers of men in the gathering with the other are in the happy contest of work and desire more roused than the quiet country.
He let her speak and had his silent pleasure at her effervescent enthusiasm. But he had his mind on other things. As he went all alone through this wonderful evening, he gave himself to the abundance of his impressions and to the gentle magic, and out of each patch, every shrub spoke to him.
As they turned into the park another couple came towards them: Edith at the side of Uechteritz, who talked on the [Stillere] in his cheerful soldierly way. Soon they had changed places, and no one appeared dissatisfied with the exchange. Fritz now went with Edith, and Frau Lisa’s bright laugh sounded to them like bright bird twittering while she lost herself in the depth of the park. At the trunk of an old copper beech whose branches reached low toward the earth,
---8---
Edith stopped: “Is it true, Fritz, really true?”
He understood her immediately. “Yes,” he said, “it is true. Still, I’ve spoken about it with no one. But you want to have a right to hear about it.”
“You’re going?”
“I submitted my application yesterday. First the usual leave for half a year or longer. But that’s only the introduction.”
“And then?”
“I take my discharge - it appears it doesn’t please you.”
“I allow myself no opinion. But it is not completely understandable for me.”
A shadow flew over his face. “And I believed no one would understand it like you.”
“Maybe, if you give me time to resign myself to it - to-day it’s a little strange for me. You’ve already called me slow once.”
An old memory seemed to awake in him; he smiled. “Do you believe that it’s become so light for me? Our dispositions are not so dissimilar. I have wrestled with the decision long enough; now it is irrevocable.”
“Even now, when you are promoted and are called to Berlin in the general staff.”
“That’s exactly why I’m going.” And when she fell silent: "One overestimates my abilities. I can only thrive and work in the fresh air, in nature, on the horse that flies through fields and forests. The sedentary occupation, the work in the narrow room is nothing for me.”
“You have your service. One would take your wishes into account; father said it only yesterday.”
“He is wrong. In the military career, there are no wishes,
---9---
but rather only obeying. One decides the place for us; we don’t choose it. And it is properly so. I want to be my own man and make a life for myself, as it corresponds to my idiosyncrasy, so nothing remains for me except going.”
A secret darkness crept over the paths. Under the trees, it had become cool. A star flashed.
“And if one had now let you in your garrison?”
“Perhaps I would have stayed,” after short reflection he replied, “and perhaps not. See, Edith, it is a thing specific to the job of a soldier in peacetime. He is created for war.”
“Who knows how soon we will have it!”
“Then it would have been desire and happiness to be a soldier.”
“And now?”
“It likes to lay in the blood,” he answered, and his voice was serious, almost heavy, “that sticks to the clod and cannot get off from it. It is something in me that pushes me to the country; I grew up on it, and I feel one with it. The metropolis would suffocate me, paralyze the last strength in me. Another can’t understand it for me, but I know it.”
“So do you mean to become a countryman?”
“It was certain for me for a year and a day, only I could not come to the decision. Now the last moment is there, later I would be too old to go to school again.”
“You want to go to Bärwalde, to your uncle?”
“I intended to ride over tomorrow from here and discuss the details with him. If he too is now frail and doesn’t worry much about the economy, one still has much from
---10---
him because he is cleverer than all the others and has a rich experience. And his inspector, you know what he’s like, the old Borowski, is the best teacher that I can have. Also, there’s more in that one than his modest nature shows at a quick glance.”
Edith knew Fritz; she knew that he was never dissuaded from that which he got down to. She set therefore a joking tone that he loved on her since the childhood years and that had always decided so many serious conversations between them. “Listen, if you went out of a promising career now all of a sudden and will have worked out as a farmer, and on top of that, at your old childless uncle’s place in Bärwalde, what will your comrades say? Will they also believe in the purity of your inclination as harmlessly I do?”
He laughed. “You mean they will take me for a sly boy who in good time wants to secure the warm nest for himself. You can be calm; I am safe from such suspicion. Bärwalde is not yet entailed, but it has always been treated as such; one has acted exactly on the laws of the seniority. And there Hans is the older of us both --”
“Hans? - him?!” she asked, and her voice had all of a sudden an indifferent, an almost disdainful sound. “He is however completely out of the question. He lives only in higher fields and is sincerely happy in his lecturer function. He writes one article after another; one can hardly open a newspaper or magazine without reading his name.”
“You have never thought very highly of his intellectual profession.”
She pursed her lips. “It is actually very far from us; it is
---11---
very far from you to all the Bärwald. It is something - I wouldn’t like to hurt you or him, but I can’t put it an-other way - something not completely manly in it. You, your ancestors, everything as you told me so often, cultivate your land or carry the sword. He studies theology and philosophy and who-knows-what-else and became a champion of the quill.”
“It was his hobby even in the first year of grammar school. And you cannot deny that he had brought it to something. His name has become widely well-known.”
“That may be. You, and especially you in your oversized modesty, have always made who-knows-what out of him. But to me your profession appears more valuable, and even if you become a countryman, under these circumstances, I can’t understand it any better.”
“Then I must venture it even without your kind approval.” A dismissive tone, such as she had never heard from him, was in his answer. “But as far as Hans is concerned, you do him wrong, have always done it. And that annoys me.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “What do I know of him? He is over fifteen years older than I and has never paid attention to me. You took yourself as the chivalrous boy of the small daughter next door and were later my dancer in Rodenburg and by the good men here. He was always the superior, always stood apart. He didn’t play as a boy and didn’t dance as a man. His books were the world for him and his ambition. What is Reckenstein worth to him, yes, even Bärwalde?”
“Every vacation, every simply conceivable free time he spent in Bärwalde.”
---12---
“Yes. He sat up in his room, at best sometimes in the garden and wrote his books!”
“Quite right. He wrote his work about East Prussian,” he retorted with sharp emphasis and carried on: “It was far from him as theologian and is in the opinion of all experts the best that was ever written about our province. No, you don’t know him, Edith. He locked himself up - it was once his arrangement. But in him is the same blood and the same longing as in us. No one loves his home as he.”
His serious words made perhaps a certain impression on her, but they did not convince. “You said once that he was supposed to become a full professor in Königsberg. How has it really turned out with that?”
“He failed at the last minute because of some direct question that, of course, in theology always plays a role. He has never gotten over it. I believe - “ He wanted to add something else though, broke off and said: “Now we’ve spoken still only of me and of us. But of your father you have told me nothing yet. How does it stand for him?”
A shadow flew over her face. “He wants to let nothing arise, certainly not! That’s why he pulls himself together, often well over his strength, especially when company is there. But I know best that since the death of the mother, he is not the boss anymore. That summer I did not get him out of here. He cannot separate himself from the economy and still sits on the same horse everyday. He wants to stay in practice, like he says. But in winter we must go to Rodenburg; privy councillor Raber wants to carry out a regular treatment with him. Hopefully it helps.”
---13---
Through the quiet park echoed clear calls. Only now they noticed that their long absence was conspicuous, that the night had advanced. They got ready to go back in the house. But before they stept on the veranda, Edith said, “Do tell me that about Hans quickly! A while ago you didn’t take your sentence to the end. What do you believe?” He collected himself: “I believe,” he said then, “that his missed Königsberg hope has become a definitive decision, that no one had believed him capable.”
“What sort of decision?”
“I may not speak about it. Even not face-to-face with you, Edith, did I do it so willingly. Maybe he will tell you it himself.”
“He will hardly give me this honor.”
“Maybe he will. He announced his arrival from Bärwalde to me within a few weeks and also wrote from a visit in Reckenstein.”
They had stept into the house. Uechteritz stood at the grand piano and sang Schumann lieder. He had a soft baritone voice that stole into the souls of the women and clung to them, often more than his small jealous wife wanted. Frau Lisa accompanied him; the others were all ears; only the Reckenstein citizen sat with Rodenburg’s first mayor in the remote parlor with a bottle of red wine and negotiated political questions in that strained manner that was characteristic of most of their conversation. They both knew that they would never come to any end, but always started off, maybe because they would have agreed even less about other things.
