Three More John Silence Stories | Page 6

German seemed not quite so fluent as usual. "My interest is so great. I was here in '70."
The other opened the door wider and at once bowed him in with a smile of genuine welcome.
"I am Bruder Kalkmann," he said quietly in a deep voice. "I myself was a master here about that time. It is a great pleasure always to welcome a former pupil." He looked at him very keenly for a few seconds, and then added, "I think, too, it is splendid of you to come--very splendid."
"It is a very great pleasure," Harris replied, delighted with his reception.
The dimly lighted corridor with its flooring of grey stone, and the familiar sound of a German voice echoing through it,--with the peculiar intonation the Brothers always used in speaking,--all combined to lift him bodily, as it were, into the dream-atmosphere of long-forgotten days. He stepped gladly into the building and the door shut with the familiar thunder that completed the reconstruction of the past. He almost felt the old sense of imprisonment, of aching nostalgia, of having lost his liberty.
Harris sighed involuntarily and turned towards his host, who returned his smile faintly and then led the way down the corridor.
"The boys have retired," he explained, "and, as you remember, we keep early hours here. But, at least, you will join us for a little while in the Bruderstube and enjoy a cup of coffee." This was precisely what the silk merchant had hoped, and he accepted with an alacrity that he intended to be tempered by graciousness. "And to-morrow," continued the Bruder, "you must come and spend a whole day with us. You may even find acquaintances, for several pupils of your day have come back here as masters."
For one brief second there passed into the man's eyes a look that made the visitor start. But it vanished as quickly as it came. It was impossible to define. Harris convinced himself it was the effect of a shadow cast by the lamp they had just passed on the wall. He dismissed it from his mind.
"You are very kind, I'm sure," he said politely. "It is perhaps a greater pleasure to me than you can imagine to see the place again. Ah,"--he stopped short opposite a door with the upper half of glass and peered in--"surely there is one of the music rooms where I used to practise the violin. How it comes back to me after all these years!"
Bruder Kalkmann stopped indulgently, smiling, to allow his guest a moment's inspection.
"You still have the boys' orchestra? I remember I used to play 'zweite Geige' in it. Bruder Schliemann conducted at the piano. Dear me, I can see him now with his long black hair and--and--" He stopped abruptly. Again the odd, dark look passed over the stern face of his companion. For an instant it seemed curiously familiar.
"We still keep up the pupils' orchestra," he said, "but Bruder Schliemann, I am sorry to say--" he hesitated an instant, and then added, "Bruder Schliemann is dead."
"Indeed, indeed," said Harris quickly. "I am sorry to hear it." He was conscious of a faint feeling of distress, but whether it arose from the news of his old music teacher's death, or--from something else--he could not quite determine. He gazed down the corridor that lost itself among shadows. In the street and village everything had seemed so much smaller than he remembered, but here, inside the school building, everything seemed so much bigger. The corridor was loftier and longer, more spacious and vast, than the mental picture he had preserved. His thoughts wandered dreamily for an instant.
He glanced up and saw the face of the Bruder watching him with a smile of patient indulgence.
"Your memories possess you," he observed gently, and the stern look passed into something almost pitying.
"You are right," returned the man of silk, "they do. This was the most wonderful period of my whole life in a sense. At the time I hated it--" He hesitated, not wishing to hurt the Brother's feelings.
"According to English ideas it seemed strict, of course," the other said persuasively, so that he went on.
"--Yes, partly that; and partly the ceaseless nostalgia, and the solitude which came from never being really alone. In English schools the boys enjoy peculiar freedom, you know."
Bruder Kalkmann, he saw, was listening intently.
"But it produced one result that I have never wholly lost," he continued self-consciously, "and am grateful for."
"Ach! Wie so, denn?"
"The constant inner pain threw me headlong into your religious life, so that the whole force of my being seemed to project itself towards the search for a deeper satisfaction--a real resting-place for the soul. During my two years here I yearned for God in my boyish way as perhaps I have never yearned for anything since. Moreover, I have