An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (9 page)

Then they understood, and inside of five minutes Philip was seated at a table. He did not find the potato spoon beyond his compass, nor did he agree with the common view that a full-grown boiled fowl is enough for two men.

He ate and ate and the others watched him, and as a hearty eater who does honor to God’s good gifts always diffuses a sense of well-being, Constable Peter Gneis observed in a comparatively genial tone: “Yes, my dear Herr Professor, I like to see a gentleman kind to a poor half-wit like this, but duty’s duty and not chicken broth, and a Mecklenburg bylaw doesn’t just exist on paper. It is always on the point of being abolished as degrading, but until it is abolished, a runaway servant has to be taken back to his master. At his master’s expense, of course. And he’s certainly in for a thrashing, no doubt of that, as it drives the Schliekers plumb crazy to part with money.”

“But the lad can’t be taken back to people of that kind!” exclaimed the Professor, thinking not only of the lad, but also of a certain girl.

“Oh, yes he can,” said the constable, “and he must. Many things have to be done that seem unpleasant to a gentleman like you. Duty’s duty, there’s no getting away from that. But,” said he, “I had nothing to do with that black eye; he’d got that when I took him over
at Fürstenberg; I dare say it goes back to Gransee and even farther.”

“But,” said the Professor, “this is an intolerable state of affairs. Can you make no suggestion, officer?”

“Well—” said the constable, arresting his spoon on its way to his mouth. By now they were all eating; time had slipped past, it was midday, and Frau Stillfritz was eating with them. Her husband still stood behind the bar drinking his beer.

For a while there was silence, except for the rattle of the half-wit’s plate and spoon. But when the silence threatened to become oppressive, Frau Stillfritz lifted up her voice. And what she had to say, she said in the tone of one who knew her mind.

“There you sit as though it rained chickens, and there’s not one of you with any idea of what to do. Oh, yes, you can talk well enough, but you’re a pack of fools when something really needs to be done. And my old man, who always talks so high and mighty, can’t do anything but fill himself glass after glass. Why don’t you eat something, Stillfritz, instead of swilling all that beer—you’ll ruin your stomach and then you won’t be able to eat.”

“Ah, Auguste,” said Stillfritz plaintively, shaking his beer glass.

“Oh yes—ah, Auguste—oh, Auguste—a bright sort of man you are when that’s all you can say. And, Herr Professor, I dare say you’re a very learned man, but you won’t get anywhere by just saying: ‘It can’t be done.’ You shouldn’t shove the whole thing off on to Peter Gneis. He is a policeman, and he is responsible for the
young scamp. You don’t expect him to let the lad escape, just to please you, do you?”

“I’m not suggesting it,” said the Professor plaintively. “I only meant that one must. . . .”

“Aha!” interrupted Frau Stillfritz triumphantly, “there we are again. One! One—is just nobody at all, Herr Professor—excuse me for saying so, but you—
you
—you are the man for the job.
You
think it all wrong, so
you
must go along to Paul Schlieker and put it right. Don’t think you can just sit around by the stove and get other folk to do your job—it’s not decent.”

And as she surveyed the men, one by one, with the eye of a basilisk, the good lady had no idea how the Professor quailed under that gaze.

“But I’m all ready to go!” he exclaimed.

“That’s right!” she cried. “You men only need a shake-up, a good stiff one, to make you see what’s what. But I’ll soon have my old man in a drunkard’s home, if he doesn’t know what’s good for him and our hotel. . . .”

“Ah, Auguste. . . .”

“Ah, Auguste, indeed—I’m sick of it. And if you do go, Herr Professor, I dare say you’ll be able to fix things up very nicely. It’ll cost you a bit to get the lad away from Schlieker, but Peter Gneis here will help you, he’s got the law behind him, and he’ll watch your pocket for you.”

“So I will,” said the constable. “You’re quite right, Frau Stillfritz.”

“Of course I’m right,” said Frau Stillfritz. “If I say a soup’s good, it
is
good. But even if you buy out the lad, Herr Professor, it isn’t clear sailing, not by a long shot. Where’s the lad to go?”

“Where indeed?” asked the Professor, quite helplessly.

“And when I look at you, Herr Professor, I can well imagine your little flat in Berlin, all spick and span, and all the corners swept every day. I don’t see Philip Münzer in a place like that, and I dare say, too, you’ve got a real old tatar. . . .”

“Indeed, no,” protested the Professor. “A very decent, neat, widow woman. . . .”

“Just as I said,” cried Frau Stillfritz in high good humor, “a real old tatar. You don’t need to tell me the sort of woman that looks after an old bachelor like you. . . . So he can’t go to your place. Now our boots has just left us, and this lad isn’t such a half-wit that he can’t find his way to the station and fetch up a trunk, and he can dig the garden—and dig it right, mind you, my lad, not just scratch it. . . .”

“Sure-lee, missus,” said the lad, uttering a word for the first time.

“There you are, you see, Herr Professor? He knows the right place for him already. And now you stop messing about with that beer tap, Stillfritz, and tell ‘em next door that we want a cab for Unsadel. It would be too much for the old gentleman to walk the whole way after his dinner, and he’ll gladly pay for a cab. There’ll be room for Herr Gneis and the lad behind, so everyone will be pleased except the old nags in the shafts.”

In which everything goes wrong, and Professor Kittguss flees in secret

T
HE OLD HORSES DID NOT
, however, appear to be at all out of humor; they trotted cheerfully into the country, and the occupants of the vehicle were all in good spirits, except possibly the young captive who still remained dumb. Professor Kittguss, who was now fated to traverse the road to Unsadel for the third time within twenty-four hours, surveyed the sunlit autumn landscape without any twinges of conscience; all would soon be settled to everyone’s satisfaction and he would be able to return to the Apocalypse. Such was the confidence inspired in him by the presence of Constable Gneis.

The driver, who was sitting at the Professor’s side, a small but comfortable property owner from Kriwitz, confined the conversation to an occasional jerk of the whip, and such observations as: “That’s Hübner’s land”; “Köller’s clover looks pretty poor”; “Look, Neitzel has sown his wheat already.”

The Professor nodded and said: “To be sure,” or
“Quite so,” and they jogged quietly along.

He took it quite as a matter of course that he should be driving into the country in charge of two human destinies, one of them, crouching at the back of the carriage, already sorely stricken, the other—ahead of him—in peril. It seemed quite natural that he should be looking out for a gate in the hedge, and hoping to see a boy called Hütefritz sitting on it, watching Professor Kittguss’ return to Unsadel.

But there was no one on the gate. The whip pointed to the gap: “Wilhelm Gau’s meadows; and a damned sight more thistle than clover and grass.”

“True,” replied the Professor.

Then they emerged from the narrow lane, and there lay the village of Unsadel by the lake, and the burnished autumn foliage blazed down to the waterside.

The cart rumbled on more rapidly. The first houses emerged from behind the windmill, all of them looking as still and spellbound and deserted as on the afternoon before.

“Well I never!” ejaculated Constable Gneis in high astonishment.

As they rattled past Otto Beier’s inn, Professor Kittguss shuddered slightly, for he had not yet forgotten the cockroaches. But today he looked in vain into Farmer Tamm’s yard; there was no fat farmer hanging from a tree, there was no scrambling for hams. All was silent and deserted.

“What’s the meaning of this, Karl—where is everybody?” the constable asked the driver.

“There must be something doing in the lower village. Perhaps there’s a fire.”

“But we’d have seen the smoke just now when we came over the hill.” The constable’s face and voice had become entirely official. Something was wrong, and what it was Professor Kittguss could have explained if he had taken the trouble to think.

But he did not, and they drove to the last farm, still puzzled. Then the driver pulled up his horses and observed:

“That’s where the trouble is, friends.”

“What are all those people doing here?” exclaimed the Professor in astonishment.

“Paul Schlieker, of course,” growled the constable and clambered down from the cart with the youth firmly linked to his wrist. “Now look here, my lad, if you try to make a getaway in the crowd and make me look a fool in front of all the people!—”

“Oh God, here’s the Professor back again,” cried Frau Lowising. “We don’t want that old Jonah to add to all our fuss and trouble!”

“Hullo, Karl!” laughed Farmer Tamm. “When there’s something doing around here, you folk from Kriwitz always turn up to have a look.”

“Thank God you’ve come, Peter Gneis,” said Gottschalk, the parish clerk, dripping with perspiration. “He won’t give ’em up, and he’s plumb mad with fury. He won’t let anyone inside.”

“Who won’t give up what?” snapped the constable. “Report the matter properly, Otto. I’m magistrate for the time being.” And indeed he looked very magisterial as he spoke.

Suddenly the mob that thronged Paul Schlieker’s garden fence, Paul Schlieker’s doorway and Paul Schlieker’s
yard gave way before a marching female phalanx—the same five deaconesses whom the Professor had seen that morning, and who had made him miss his train. And they still carried their little bags in their hands and proceeded in single file led by the masculine lady with the
bristly chin while the red-cheeked country girl brought up the rear.

But now they looked quite different. Their hair was wild, their eyes glittered and their faces were white or red with anger.

The leader stopped in front of the constable while the others halted with a jerk and stood motionless except for the little bags that still dangled from their wrists.

“I am thankful you have come, Herr Gneis,” she gasped. “We’ve been standing here for four hours begging and praying the man to let us in and hand over the foster children as his duty is under the bylaws. We have also told him what we think of him. But there’s not a sign of life. I dare say the Schliekers went away on purpose just to keep us waiting. . . .”

“Look,” said the constable, pointing to the chimney, from which a wisp of smoke was rising. “Look, Sister Adelaide, babies can’t stoke fires. They’re at home, Sister Adelaide, laughing fit to burst, and they’ll say they didn’t hear you because they were asleep. Gottschalk, you should have broken down the door long ago, and had them out on the mat—this is a breach of the peace, I’ll have you know. Now then, out of this yard, all of you!” shouted the constable. “You’ve no business on private property. Get a move on, Frieda! Stand aside, young man!”

Still linked to his prisoner, he managed to bustle and push them all out of the yard, and then shouted, “Shut the yard door, Gottschalk, and see that none of them get in again. Only the sisters and yourself—and perhaps the Professor—where on earth is the old chap? . . . Well, never mind—now I’ll make a start.”