Matthew buried his face on the close-clipped green lawn in humiliated mortification.

“Good grief!” was all Sabina heard him mutter to himself.

3 Baron Heinrich von Dortmann

3

Baron Heinrich von Dortmann

An excursion to Berlin, whatever the occasion, put Sabina’s father through a wide range of inner emotions.

Driving into the capital city was usually accompanied by a certain churning of discomfort in the pit of his stomach. The anticipation of his time in the hectic metropolis was normally less than enthusiastic.

Making the trip with his daughter helped relax his uneasiness, but now, even with Sabina at his side, the return trip to his country estate turned the baron pensive.

The contrast between the noise and pace of the city and the wide-spaced serenity of the German countryside struck a deep coinciding chord in his own soul and caused him to reflect upon the diverging pathways of life, and upon the one he personally had chosen.

Visiting his brother, especially in a social setting such as yesterday’s, accentuated the contrast and always deepened his thoughtful reflections.

The result of his mental wanderings was always the same—a great thankfulness for his life as it was and a pleasure to be returning home.

The baron cast his gaze widely about on both sides of the deserted country road as he and Sabina rode in a comfortable silence.

No one would call it the world’s most beautiful land, this Pomeranian plain south of the Baltic.

It was mostly flat and uninteresting, without snowcapped peaks of fairy tales, or dense forests of legends, or even a mighty river about which a single song had been written.

No Schwarzwald, no Danube, no Alps here beckoned visitors.

The coastline, which bordered the holdings of his ancestors along the sea, boasted none of the towering majestic cliffs he had read about in England and Scotland. Trees had once grown plentifully here, and numerous wooded regions were still scattered about the landscape. But the trees that grew on his land were too thin and sparse for any self-respecting gnome of the Black Forest to look twice at. Even the great river Oder could not rightly be given a Prussian or Pomeranian heritage, though its flow was not many kilometers to the west of his land.

There was little to draw a man here… but earth—good earth, rich, black earth, earth to grow things, earth that the rains and the warm winds accompanying the ocean currents made green in the spring, full of hope and promise, earth that turned the shoots and stalks gold in the summer, and earth that brought forth of its abundant bounty to feed hungry mouths in the fall.

This was earth rich of soil, imbued with the mystery of life.