“Just try and persuade him. Persuasion always helps.”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully.
Angrily Meier let fly at her. “What do you mean by nodding to the fool? What do you mean speaking to the fellow at all?”
“You think that everyone’s a fool, except yourself!” she replied calmly.
“Oh! So in your eyes I’m a fool!”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Shut up! You said it just now!”
“I didn’t!” And after long reflection: “Fräulein Violet is quite right.”
“What is Vi right about? All she can do is talk nonsense. She’s just like a seven-months-old babe.”
“That it’s better not to get mixed up with a man like you.”
“So that’s what she said?” Meier almost burst with fury and injured conceit. “And her fellow, the Lieutenant—is he anything better than me? What? You think he is? A swine like that! Comes into my office and brandishes a revolver in front of my nose. But I told him where he got off! Just let him come again, the silly idiot. I’ve got a revolver now. And I won’t just threaten like that fool. I’ll shoot.” He wrenched the pistol from his pocket and waved it in the air.
“Have you gone mad?” Amanda screamed at him furiously. “Put that thing away at once. Waving a thing like that in my face! I am pleased! You seem to think it impresses me.”
He was startled by her angry, contemptuous words. Somewhat crestfallen, though of course still defiant, he stood before her, in his hand the pistol with its muzzle lowered.
“You’re going in again at once and put the money back in the safe!” she ordered. “Heavens, I can put up with a lot, and I’m not at all squeamish, but stealing money—no, thanks! Not me! And you’re not going to, either.”
Meier went red—she could not see it, of course.
“So that’s what he’s been blabbing to you, the fine chap!” he cried angrily. “I just want to tell you one thing: it’s no bloody business of his or of yours! That’s my own affair with the Rittmeister. If I take my wages, there’s no need for you to put your nose in—understand?”
“Hans,” she said more gently, “you must put the money back; otherwise it is finished between us. I can’t stand for that sort of thing.”
“I don’t bloody well care whether it’s finished between us or not. I’m glad it’s finished. Who do you think you are? Do you think I bother about you? I slept with Hartig tonight; yes, Hartig, so there! And an old girl like that with eight children—I prefer her ten times to you. Oh, damn!”
It was a blow with all her strength and it landed right in the middle of his face. Meier staggered.
“You swine, you!” she said breathlessly. “You miserable wretch!”
“You struck me?” He was half out of his mind with pain. “You—you low-down chicken girl—strike me, the bailiff? Now you shall see.…”
He himself could see almost nothing, however. Everything reeled before his eyes, her figure melted away in the moonlight; then she was there again.… And now he saw her quite clearly.… She had struck him!
He quickly raised the pistol and pressed the trigger, with trembling finger.…
The shot cracked unbearably loud in his ear.
Amanda’s face came close to him, getting bigger all the time, white and black in the moonlight.…
“You!” she whispered. “You, Hans, shoot at me!”
And there was complete silence between the two. Each heard only the jerky breathing of the other. They stood like that for a long time.…
The echoes of the shot had long died away, to be replaced by gentler noises.… They again heard the soft wind in the treetops.… Back in the stable a halter chain rattled slowly through its ring.
“Mandy,” said Black Meier. “Mandy … I …”
“Finished!” she said with a hard voice. “Quite finished!”
She looked at him once again.
“He fires at me—and then he says ‘Mandy.’ ” It was as if this thought took her breath away. “What would he have said if he had hit me?”
And the serious danger in which she had stood, her incredible escape, overwhelmed her so suddenly that she broke into a soft weeping. And weeping thus she ran away from him, her shoulders hunched. Under the light hem of her skirt he saw her strong legs moving faster and faster as she sped away.… She turned into the path leading to the Manor; he no longer saw her, heard only her weeping, that suppressed pitiful, sobbing—and then that, too, was gone.…
Meier stood for a moment longer, staring after her. Then he lifted the pistol, heavy in his hand, and regarded it. He moved the safety catch into place—there, now it was safe, nothing more could happen with the thing.…
With a peevish shrug of his shoulders he pushed it into his trouser pocket and went hastily into the office to get his suitcases.
IV
The Lieutenant and Vi were sitting on a bench in the park. They were not sitting there like a pair of lovers: or perhaps indeed they were—like lovers who have quarreled. That is to say, they sat far apart, silent.
“Fancy letting that coward say a thing like that to you,” she had said at the conclusion of their argument. “I don’t understand you.”
“Of course you don’t understand me, my little lamb,” he had answered very patronizingly. “That’s all to the good. That means he won’t understand me either.”
“Running away from the fellow! What airs he will give himself now! And I just can’t bear the smell of him.”
“Don’t go so near him,” he had said in a bored way. “Then his smell won’t upset you.”
“Excuse me, Fritz, when have I gone too near him? That was mean of you, Fritz!”
But Fritz returned no answer, and so they had fallen into silence.…
The echo of the shot interrupted this quarrel. The Lieutenant started out of his thoughts. “He has fired a pistol!” he cried and began running.
“Who?” she asked, received no answer, and ran after him.
Their course took them over the moonlit park. Its long grass wetted her stockings; then through bushes, across paths, right through flower beds. Vi panted, wanted to call out and could not, since she had to keep on running.
Then the Lieutenant paused and signaled to her to be quiet. She peered over his shoulder through lilac and guelder-rose bushes and just caught sight of the weeping poultry maid disappearing in the direction of the Manor. Bailiff Meier was standing motionless outside the house.
“Hasn’t hit her, thank God!” whispered the Lieutenant.
“Then what’s she crying for?”
“Fright.”
“The fellow must go to jail,” exclaimed Vi.
“Don’t be so silly, Vi. Then he’d let his tongue wag a bit, wouldn’t he? I suppose you’d like that?”
“Well, and now?”
“Now we’ll wait and see what he’s going to do.”
The little dark figure went quickly up to the staff-house; even in the bushes they could hear the noise of the vigorously slammed door. Bailiff Meier was gone.
“Now he’s gone,” said Fräulein von Prackwitz disconsolately. “And from now on I shall have to be particularly polite to him, so that he won’t tell Papa.”
“Just wait a bit,” was all the Lieutenant said.
They did not have long to wait. Hardly three or four minutes. Then the door opened again and out stepped Meier, a suitcase in his right hand, a suitcase in his left hand. He did not even waste time in closing the door again, but strode on, a little hampered, it is true, yet at a steady pace—toward the farmyard, out into the world—away.
“He’s clearing out,” whispered the Lieutenant.
“Thank God!”
“You won’t see him again,” he muttered, and fell silent, as if he was annoyed at what he had said.
“Let’s hope so.”