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THE LOVE OF ULRICH NEBENDAHL
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This is the most unexpected of all works of Jerome K. Jerome, and not because it's not comic. A more touching, romantic story is hard to imagine, and if it wasn't a real story he heard somewhere and wrote down, it's a sudden rare insight into the author!
An aside, one notices over and over about the author's love for all things German, and not quite so much for other parts of the continent, especially France. One has to remember that mist of his writings were much before WWI, which wasn't blamed on Germany or German people as much as it was on Kaiser Wilhelm II, even though the anti German wave of feeling in England had the royals not only severing their ties with the German part of the clan, however intimate the blood ties, but also change their name, from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to a much more English Windsor.
Also, this period had been post several turmoil on continent following that in France, what with the revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic wars, eventually put down beginning the retreat from Moscow and finally at Waterloo.
But the love in England, of everything German, and exaltation thereof, at the time of Jerome K Jerome writing this, was perhaps more general, even a wave, that was forgotten post commencement of WWI, definitely that of WWII, even though to some extent it was responsible for the rise of the megalomaniac Nazi ideology in Germany.
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"“Now, how does a man know when he is in love?” asked Ulrich of the Pastor who, having been married twice, should surely be experienced upon the point. “How should he be sure that it is this woman and no other to whom his heart has gone out?”
"A commonplace-looking man was the Herr Pastor, short and fat and bald. But there had been other days, and these had left to him a voice that still was young; and the evening twilight screening the seared face, Ulrich heard but the pastor’s voice, which was the voice of a boy.
"“She will be dearer to you than yourself. Thinking of her, all else will be as nothing. For her you would lay down your life.”"
"All that afternoon Ulrich communed with himself, tried to understand himself, and could not. For Elsa and Margot and Hedwig were not the only ones by a long way. What girl in the village did he not love, if it came to that: Liesel, who worked so hard and lived so poorly, bullied by her cross-grained granddam. Susanna, plain and a little crotchety, who had never had a sweetheart to coax the thin lips into smiles. The little ones — for so they seemed to long, lanky Ulrich, with their pleasant ways — Ulrich smiled as he thought of them — how should a man love one more than another?
"The Herr Pfarrer shook his head and sighed. “That is not love. Gott in Himmel! think what it would lead to? The good God never would have arranged things so. You love one; she is the only woman in the world for you.”
"“But you, yourself, Herr Pastor, you have twice been married,” suggested the puzzled wheelwright.
"“But one at a time, Ulrich — one at a time. That is a very different thing.”"
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But war came, Ulrich went to join, and instead was caught into a life of stealthy tending to the wounded. He eventually came to woods near his village, keeping out of site in the forest.
"There had been trouble since Ulrich’s departure. A French corps of observation had been camped upon the hill, and twice within the month had a French soldier been found murdered in the woods. Heavy had been the penalties exacted from the village, and terrible had been the Colonel’s threats of vengeance. Now, for a third time, a soldier stabbed in the back had been borne into camp by his raging comrades, and this very afternoon the Colonel had sworn that if the murderer were not handed over to him within an hour from dawn, when the camp was to break up, he would before marching burn the village to the ground. The Herr Pfarrer was on his way back from the camp where he had been to plead for mercy, but it had been in vain.
"“Such are foul deeds!” said Ulrich.
"“The people are mad with hatred of the French,” answered the Herr Pastor. “It may be one, it may be a dozen who have taken vengeance into their own hands. May God forgive them.”
"“They will not come forward — not to save the village?”
"“Can you expect it of them! There is no hope for us; the village will burn as a hundred others have burned.”"
"Ulrich stood alone, looking down upon Alt Waldnitz bathed in moonlight. And there came to him the words of the old pastor: “She will be dearer to you than yourself. For her you would lay down your life.” And Ulrich knew that his love was the village of Alt Waldnitz, where dwelt his people, the old and wrinkled, the laughing “little ones,” where dwelt the helpless dumb things with their deep pathetic eyes, where the bees hummed drowsily, and the thousand tiny creatures of the day."
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"They hanged him high upon a withered elm, with his face towards Alt Waldnitz, that all the village, old and young, might see; and then to the beat of drum and scream of fife they marched away; and forest-hidden Waldnitz gathered up once more its many threads of quiet life and wove them into homely pattern.
"They talked and argued many a time, and some there were who praised and some who blamed. But the Herr Pfarrer could not understand.
"Until years later a dying man unburdened his soul so that the truth became known.
"Then they raised Ulrich’s coffin reverently, and the young men carried it into the village and laid it in the churchyard that it might always be among them. They reared above him what in their eyes was a grand monument, and carved upon it:
"“Greater love hath no man than this.”"
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September 20, 2020 - September 20, 2020.
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