There lay the familiar outlines of the houses,
sheeted with silver; there stood the trees in the little central square
with the fountain and small green lawns; there loomed the shape of
the church next to the Gasthof der Brüdergemeinde; and just beyond,
dimly rising into the sky, he saw with a sudden thrill the mass of
the huge school building, blocked castle-like with deep shadows in
the moonlight, standing square and formidable to face him after the
silences of more than a quarter of a century. He passed quickly down the deserted village street and stopped close
beneath its shadow, staring up at the walls that had once held
him prisoner for two years--two unbroken years of discipline and
homesickness. Memories and emotions surged through his mind; for the
most vivid sensations of his youth had focused about this spot, and
it was here he had first begun to live and learn values. Not a single
footstep broke the silence, though lights glimmered here and there
through cottage windows; but when he looked up at the high walls of
the school, draped now in shadow, he easily imagined that well-known
faces crowded to the windows to greet him--closed windows that really
reflected only moonlight and the gleam of stars. This, then, was the old school building, standing foursquare to the
world, with its shuttered windows, its lofty, tiled roof, and the
spiked lightning-conductors pointing like black and taloned fingers
from the corners. For a long time he stood and stared. Then,
presently, he came to himself again, and realised to his joy that a
light still shone in the windows of the _Bruderstube_. He turned from the road and passed through the iron railings; then
climbed the twelve stone steps and stood facing the black wooden door
with the heavy bars of iron, a door he had once loathed and dreaded
with the hatred and passion of an imprisoned soul, but now looked upon
tenderly with a sort of boyish delight. Almost timorously he pulled the rope and listened with a tremor of
excitement to the clanging of the bell deep within the building. And
the long-forgotten sound brought the past before him with such a
vivid sense of reality that he positively shivered. It was like the
magic bell in the fairy-tale that rolls back the curtain of Time and
summons the figures from the shadows of the dead. He had never felt so
sentimental in his life. It was like being young again. And, at the
same time, he began to bulk rather large in his own eyes with a certain
spurious importance. He was a big man from the world of strife and
action. In this little place of peaceful dreams would he, perhaps, not
cut something of a figure? “I’ll try once more,” he thought after a long pause, seizing the iron
bell-rope, and was just about to pull it when a step sounded on the
stone passage within, and the huge door slowly swung open. A tall man with a rather severe cast of countenance stood facing him in
silence. “I must apologise--it is somewhat late,” he began a trifle pompously,
“but the fact is I am an old pupil. I have only just arrived and really
could not restrain myself.” His 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 tomorrow,” 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.