Having eased my conscience by these hints, which he will find invaluable, to the traveller, I can now go on to say that except for the pillow I would have had if I had not brought my own, for the coloured quilt, for the water to wash with brought in a very small coffee-pot, and for the breakfast which was as cold and repellent as in some moods some persons find the world, my experiences of the hotel were pleasing. It is true that I spent most of the day, as I shall presently relate, away from it, and it is also true that in the searching light of morning I saw much that had been hidden: scraps of paper lying about the grass near the house, an automatic bon-bon machine in the form of a brooding hen, and an automatic weighing machine, both at the top of the very steps leading down to the nook that had been the night before enchanted, and, worst shock of all, an electric bell piercing the heart of the very beech tree under which I had sat. But the beauties are so many and so great that if a few of them are spoilt there are still enough left to make Lauterbach one of the most delightful places conceivable. The hotel was admirably quiet; no tourists arrived late, and those already in it seemed to go to bed extraordinarily early; for when I came up from the water soon after ten the house was so silent that instinctively I stole along the passages on the tips of my toes, and for no reason that I could discover felt conscience-stricken. Gertrud, too, appeared to think it was unusually late; she was waiting for me at the door with a lamp, and seemed to expect me to look conscience-stricken. Also, she had rather the expression of the resigned and forgiving wife of an incorrigible evil-doer. I went into my room much pleased that I am not a man and need not have a wife who forgives me.
The windows were left wide open, and all night through my dreams I could hear the sea gently rippling among the rushes. At six in the morning a train down at the station hidden behind the chestnuts began to shunt and to whistle, and as it did not leave off and I could not sleep till it did, I got up and sat at the window and amused myself watching the pictures between the columns in the morning sunlight. A solitary mower in the meadow was very busy with his scythe, but its swishing could not be heard through the shunting. At last the train steamed away and peace settled down again over Lauterbach, the scythe swished audibly, the larks sang rapturously, and I fell to saying my prayers, for indeed it was a day to be grateful for, and the sea was the deepest, divinest blue.
The bathing at Lauterbach is certainly perfect. You walk along a footpath on the edge of low cliffs, shaded all the way from the door of the hotel to the bathing-huts by the beechwood, the water heaving and shining just below you, the island of Vilm opposite, the distant headland of Thiessow a hazy violet line between the misty blues of sea and sky in front, and at your feet moss and grass and dear common flowers flecked with the dancing lights and shadows of a beechwood when the sun is shining.
'Oh this is perfect!' I exclaimed to Gertrud; for on a fine fresh morning one must exclaim to somebody. She was behind me on the narrow path, her arms full of towels and bathing things. 'Won't you bathe too, afterwards, Gertrud? Can you resist it?'
But Gertrud evidently could resist it very well. She glanced at the living loveliness of the sea with an eye that clearly saw in it only a thing that made dry people wet. If she had been Dr. Johnson she would boldly have answered, 'Madam, I hate immersion.' Being Gertrud, she pretended that she had a cold.
'Well, to-morrow then,' I said hopefully; but she said colds hung about her for days.
'Well, as soon as you have got over it,' I said, persistently and odiously hopeful; but she became prophetic and said she would never get over it.
The bathing-huts are in a row far enough away from the shore to be in deep water. You walk out to them along a little footbridge of planks and find a sunburnt woman, amiable as all the people seem to be who have their business in deep waters, and she takes care of your things and dries them for you and provides you with anything you have forgotten and charges you twenty pfennings at the end for all her attentions as well as the bathe. The farthest hut is the one to get if you can—another invaluable hint. It is very roomy, and has a sofa, a table, and a big looking-glass, and one window opening to the south and one to the east. Through the east window you see the line of low cliffs with the woods above till they melt into a green plain that stretches off into vagueness towards the haze of Thiessow. Through the south window you see the little island of Vilm, with its one house set about with cornfields, and its woods on the high ground at the back.
Gertrud sat on the steps knitting while I swam round among the jelly-fish and thought of Marianne North. How right she was about the bathing, and the colours, and the crystal clearness of the water in that sandy cove! The bathing woman leaned over the hand-rail watching me with a sympathetic smile. She wore a white sun-bonnet, and it looked so well against the sky that I wished Gertrud could be persuaded to put one on too in place of her uninteresting and eminently respectable black bonnet. I could have stayed there for hours, perfectly happy, floating on the sparkling stuff, and I did stay there for nearly one, with the result that I climbed up the cliff a chilled and saddened woman, and sat contemplating the blue tips of my fingers while the waiter brought breakfast, and thought what a pitiful thing it was to have blue finger tips, instead of rejoicing as I would have done after a ten minutes' swim in the glorious fact that I was alive at all on such a morning.
The cold tea, cold eggs, and hard rolls did not make me more cheerful. I sat under the beeches where I had had supper the night before and shivered in my thickest coat, with the July sun blazing on the water and striking brilliant colours out of the sails of the passing fisher-boats. The hotel dog came along the shingle with his tongue out, and lay down near me in the shade. Visitors from Putbus, arriving in an omnibus for their morning bathe, passed by fanning themselves with their hats.
The Putbus visitors come down every morning in a sort of waggonette to bathe and walk back slowly up the hill to dinner. After this exertion they think they have done enough for their health, and spend the rest of the day sleeping, or sitting out of doors drinking beer and coffee. I think this is quite a good way of spending a holiday if you have worked hard all the rest of the year; and the tourists I saw looked as if they had. More of them stay at Putbus than at Lauterbach, although it is so much farther from the sea, because the hotel I was at was slightly dearer than—I ought rather to say, judging from the guide-book, not quite so cheap as—the Putbus hotels. I suppose it was less full than it might be because of this slight difference, or perhaps there was the slight difference because it was less full—who shall solve such mysteries? Anyhow the traveller need not be afraid of the bill, for when I engaged our rooms the waiter was surprised that I refused to put myself en pension, and explained in quite an aggrieved voice that all the Herrschaften put themselves en pension, and he hoped I did not think five marks a day for everything a too expensive arrangement. I praised the arrangement as just and excellent, but said that, being a bird of passage, I would prefer not to make it.
After breakfast I set out to explore the Goor, the lovely beechwood stretching along the coast from the very doors of the hotel. I started so briskly down the footpath on the edge of the cliffs in the hope of getting warm, that tourists who were warm already and were sitting under the trees gasping, stared at me reproachfully as I hurried past.
The Goor is beautiful. The path I took runs through thick shade with many windings, and presently comes out at the edge of the wood down by the sea in a very hot, sheltered corner, where the sun beats all day long on the shingle and coarse grass. A solitary oak tree, old and storm-beaten,