In tears Frau von Prackwitz hurried toward Studmann. Her grief had broken down all barriers. Seizing his hands she said in despair: “Studmann, Studmann, now everything is finished—he’s shot them.”
Studmann looked at the disturbed faces around him.
“Mamma’s breeding geese! Papa’s favorite gander Attila! It has just died.”
“But they’re only geese! We can settle the matter … compensation.”
“My parents will never forgive him.” She wept. “And it was also contemptible of him! It wasn’t the little bit of vetch! He wanted to hurt my parents.”
Studmann looked around inquiringly, but the serious faces of the old servant and the young girl told him that more than geese had been shot.
Hubert Räder came quietly up from the basement, on rubber soles. He took up a respectful attitude near the stairs, his face indifferent, yet ready for orders. He glanced neither at the weeping woman nor out of the window at the victims. But he was there in case he should be needed; he was ready.
“What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?” wept Frau von Prackwitz. “Whatever I do will annoy them, and will annoy him, too.”
The Rittmeister emerged from his room like a jack-in-the-box. His face was no longer white but flecked with red, betokening the transition from wordless fury to abusive rage. “Don’t take on like that!” he shouted at his wife. “Blubbering before all the servants on account of a few ridiculous geese.”
“I must ask you,” cried Studmann outraged, “not to shout at your wife like that!” In his teacher’s way he added a precept. “Men shouldn’t shout at their wives.”
“This is fine!” said the furious Rittmeister, looking around in protest. “Haven’t I pleaded, implored, demanded a hundred times: repair your fence, keep your geese under guard, don’t let them get at my vetch? Haven’t I warned them a hundred times: something will happen if I catch them at my vetch again? And now that something’s happened, my wife weeps as if the world was coming to an end and my friend shouts at me! This is really too much!” He threw himself into a hall chair, making it creak; he jerked at the crease of his trousers with long, trembling fingers.
“Oh, Achim!” wailed his wife. “You have shot away the lease. Papa will never forgive you for this.”
The Rittmeister jumped up from his chair at once. “You don’t think that the geese got at the vetch by accident, do you, after all that’s happened today? No, they were brought there. They wanted to annoy me, to provoke me. Good—I shot them!”
“But, Achim, you can’t prove it.”
“If I’m right I don’t need to prove it.”
“The weaker is always wrong …” began Studmann wisely.
“We’ll see whether I’m the weaker!” cried the Rittmeister, enraged afresh by this wise dictum. “I’m not going to have them jeer at me. Elias, go at once to the vetch, pick up the dead geese, take them to my mother-in-law and tell her …”
“Herr Rittmeister,” said the old servant, “I was sent here on an errand by my mistress. With all due respect, Herr Rittmeister, I am employed at the Manor.”
“You will do what I say, Elias!” cried the Rittmeister in a louder voice. “You will take the dead geese and tell my mother-in-law …”
“I shall not do it, Herr Rittmeister. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Five or six geese are too much for an old man. Attila alone weighs a quarter of a hundredweight.”
“Hubert shall help you. Hubert, help him carry the dead geese.”
“Good day, madam. Good day, Herr Rittmeister.” Elias went.
“Fool!—Hubert, present my mother-in-law with my compliments; those who won’t listen to reason will have their knuckles rapped.”
“The Rittmeister’s compliments, and those who won’t listen to reason will have their knuckles rapped,” repeated Räder, his fishy eyes resting on his master.
“That’s right.” The Rittmeister spoke more calmly. “You can take a barrow, get a man from the farm to help you.…”
“Very good, Herr Rittmeister.” Hubert went to the door.
“Hubert!”
The servant stopped. He looked at his mistress. “Yes, madam?”
VIII
What made the tearful negotiations in the Manor so difficult was the slaughtered geese. Not the fact that they had been shot by martial law, as it were, for field stealing—this news had already been brought to Frau von Teschow by old Elias, with a haste that was quite unusual and undignified. No, it was the corpses of the victims themselves, their departed souls, which kept flitting through Frau von Teschow’s room, shaded so pleasantly by the lime trees. The noise of the masons’ hammers had died away; the door was bricked up; the cross had been painted over red on an order from Studmann, hastily whispered in passing by. The old Geheimrat was still wandering among his pines, knowing nothing, fortunately, so that there was still time to pacify his wife.
And Frau von Teschow was, in fact, sitting much more calmly in her large armchair, only infrequently dabbing a handkerchief to her old eyes that wept so easily. Fräulein von Kuckhoff uttered every now and again an apt or inapt proverb, usually apt. Herr von Studmann sat with a suitably courteous and somewhat troubled face, interjecting a shrewd word from time to time, as soothing as balm.
Frau Eva was huddled at her mother’s feet on a kind of little bolster, thus wisely indicating by her choice of seat how completely subordinate she was to the old lady, and revealing that she knew the chief precept of the marriage catechism inside out—that it is usually the wives who have to suffer for the vices and stupidities of their husbands. Not for one moment did she forget what she had said to Herr von Studmann as she left the Villa—namely that she wanted to rescue what could be rescued. Without flinching she let Frau von Teschow not only say things which do not matter very much to a woman, remarks on goose-slaughter, the brick cross, the convicts or the Rittmeister, but also things which a woman will not tolerate even from her mother: remarks about her extravagance in silk underwear, her expensive taste for lobster (“But, Mamma, they’re just Japanese crabs!”), her lipstick, her tendency to fatness, the low necks of her blouses, and Violet’s upbringing.
“Yes, Mamma, I’ll pay more attention to it. You are right,” said Frau von Prackwitz obediently. She was a heroine—Studmann admitted it frankly. She neither flinched nor hesitated. She certainly did not find the victor’s yoke light, yet she did not betray the fact. And for whom was she suffering these bitter humiliations? For a man who would never appreciate it, who, when everything had been happily straightened out, would triumphantly claim: “Well, didn’t I tell you so? A lot of fuss about nothing! I knew it, but you always have to lose your head; you will never listen to me!”
It was dreadful how quickly a comradeship dating from before the war broke down in times like these, under such conditions. Herr von Prackwitz had certainly never been a brilliant or even very capable officer; but he had been a reliable comrade, a brave man and a pleasant companion. And what was left of it? He was not reliable—he sent his officials out against field thieves, and when the thieves were caught he went and hid behind a bush. He was no longer a comrade—he was only a superior, and an unjustly critical superior at that. He was no longer brave—he preferred to let his wife go alone to a distressing interview. He was no longer pleasant society—he spoke only of himself, of the insults he suffered, of the troubles he had, of the money he lacked. One had to admit, though, that these defects had always been present, and that it was the badness of the times which had made them blossom so luxuriantly.