Then she started to unroll her enemy, the Hawk.
Hubert Räder was already up and at work when Vi with highly flushed cheeks entered the Villa.
“Morning, Hubert!” she cried. “Good Lord, are you making everything so terribly tidy again? Mamma has so often forbidden you to do it.”
“Women don’t understand anything about it,” declared Räder unmoved, and regarded his work with a stern but approving eye. Since the Rittmeister was returning today, his room had to be thoroughly cleaned out. The manservant’s procedure in this was first to sweep, wipe, wax, polish and dust one side of the room before beginning on the other half, by which he reduced Frau von Prackwitz to complete despair. Time and again she had explained to him that the clean side always got covered with dust again while the other half was being cleaned …
“Yes, madam,” Räder would say obediently, “but if I am called away to some other work, the Rittmeister will at least have one clean side on which he can live.” And obstinate as a mule he would go on cleaning in his own way.
Now he said meaningly: “Madam has already sneezed twice, Fräulein!”
“Yes, yes, Hubert,” said Vi. “That will be all right. I shall go straight up to my room, wash, change and disarrange the bed to show I’ve slept in it. Oh, no, I don’t think I need do that after all. I shan’t need to have been lying in bed if Mamma and Papa hear of all that happened last night!”
“You’d better hurry up,” said Räder. “Madam always gets up immediately after she has sneezed.”
“Oh, Hubert, don’t be so silly!” cried Vi reproachfully. “You are bursting with curiosity. Just imagine, little Meier ran off with the cash. But he’s back again now. And old Kniebusch has caught Bäumer, but he hasn’t got him here yet; he’s lying tied up in the forest, and Hartig and Kniebusch and Meier have gone to fetch him with the cart. He’s unconscious. Don’t stand there so stupidly. Put that polisher down. What do you think about it, Hubert?”
“You talk to me too familiarly, Fräulein,” said Räder coldly. “The Rittmeister won’t have it, neither do I think it quite right.”
“Oh, you old fathead! I don’t care how I talk to you. I won’t be polite to an old haddock, either. Yes, that’s what you are—you’re an old haddock! You’d better pay attention to what I tell you—you were there, too. And don’t go and make a hash of it all if Mamma asks you.…”
“Excuse me, Fräulein, I was not there. If anything as outrageous as that happens then I am not there. I have got to think of my reputation. I don’t mix with safe-breakers and poachers. It’s just the same as with uniforms—I don’t mix with them.”
“But Hubert, you know that Mamma said you were to go with me. You are not going to let us down.”
“Very sorry, Fräulein, it can’t be done. Would you mind stepping off the rug? I have to comb its fringes. Why do people make fringes like that on carpets anyway? They always look untidy and bedraggled. I suppose it’s just to give us more work.”
“Hubert!” said Vi very appealingly, and suddenly despondent. “You won’t tell Mamma that you didn’t go with me because of the things that happened, will you?”
“No, Fräulein,” said Hubert. “My nose began to bleed in the farmyard, and I said I’d come on later and didn’t find you because you’d taken the path by the coach-house and I went up the glade by the deer’s feeding ground.”
“Thank God!” Vi breathed with relief. “You’re a decent chap after all, Hubert.”
“And I’d spend a little time if I were you,” continued Hubert unmoved, “thinking about what you’re going to tell madam. I wouldn’t say too much about Bailiff Meier. And how about the poacher, Bäumer? If the forester caught him, then you must have been there, Fräulein. What story have you fixed up with the forester?”
“I haven’t fixed up any story, Hubert. He went straight back to the forest again—with the bailiff.”
“There, you see! And did you shoot the stag or did he shoot it? Or hasn’t it been shot at all? I thought I heard a report toward morning.”
“Oh, Hubert—but that’s the craziest thing of all; I haven’t told you about that yet. That was little Meier. He fired at the poultry maid, Amanda Backs. Really!”
“Fräulein!” said Hubert sternly, turning his expressionless fish’s eye on her. “I didn’t hear that, I know nothing of any such wild goings-on.”
“But he didn’t hit her. He was drunk.”
“Go up to your room now and change,” said Hubert Räder, as agitated as it was possible for him to be. “No, you must get out of here now, I’ve got to tidy up, you’re disturbing me.”
“Hubert, don’t be impertinent. If I want to stay here I’ll stay.”
“And if I were you I’d think out carefully what I was going to say—and the best thing for you is to say nothing. Say that you turned back with me when my nose began to bleed.… But you’ll never manage that—and so this afternoon there’ll be the prettiest gossip going around, and this evening we’ll have the police in the house.… But I’ve taken every precaution as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got two blood-stained handkerchiefs, and at half-past one I knocked at Armgard’s door and asked her what the time was, because my alarm clock had stopped. Not that it had. So I know nothing, and I haven’t spoken to, you either. I haven’t seen you since my nose began bleeding.… Good morning, madam, I hope you slept well. Yes, I’m making it thoroughly clean here, except that the vacuum cleaner’s broken. But that was Armgard’s fault, madam. Still, I can manage … And I must ask you to excuse me for not having accompanied Fräulein Violet into the forest. You see, my nose began to bleed frightfully because I can’t bear sleeplessness. I suffered from that as a child. If I didn’t get enough sleep …”
“Please, Hubert, would you mind being quiet now? As I say, when once you open your mouth! And you, Violet—still in hunting dress! May I congratulate you, or was the expedition in vain?”
“Oh, Mamma, what a time we had! It was marvelous. Yes, the stag was shot but I didn’t shoot it, it was, now think—but you’ll never guess—it was Bäumer who shot it. Oh, you know, Mamma, the poacher from Altlohe whom Grandpa is always cursing. And Kniebusch caught him, Bäumer of course, but we’ve got the stag too. And now they’re in the forest, fetching him, but he’s unconscious. And Bailiff Meier …”
“May I get on with my cleaning?” interrupted Räder with quite unusual emphasis.
“All right, Vi, come into my room. To think of you present at all this! I’m sure to get a fright when you tell me.… But Papa will be pleased that Bäumer’s been caught. How is it that he is unconscious? Did Kniebusch shoot him? I’m always telling father that Kniebusch is better …”
They were gone.
For the moment everything is all right, thought the servant. But if the Rittmeister comes and asks? What then?
VII
Von Prackwitz sprang from the taxi and ran up the steps into the entrance hall of the railway station. It was a good half an hour before the train was due to start, but he had still to take over his men from the agent, pay him, get a party ticket made out …
Despite his sleepless night the Rittmeister felt enterprising and hopeful—it was a good thing that he was not returning to Neulohe alone, without friends. And then something of the country was in the station air. At Alexanderplatz one still thought only of Berlin; here in Schlesische Bahnhof one thought of fields and harvest … He had a feeling that he would bring in the Neulohe harvest successfully!
The Rittmeister stood as if thunderstruck. Impatiently he motioned a porter away with a shake of his head. Then he stepped back a pace or two, afraid of being discovered. It was a thing which could happen only to him: the employer hiding himself from his workers, frightened at the sight of them.