“No need to. You can drive up to the forester’s house through the wood. No one will see you.”
“And supposing I’m grabbed on the way? By the gendarmes or the convicts? Nix, I’m clearing off.”
“Herr Meier!” warned Pagel. “Don’t be silly. Rather than let you go off I’d shoot your tires to pieces.”
Furiously Meier looked at the hand with the pistol.
“Well, get hold of him!” he said sullenly. “But put that thing away. Up with you, into the corner! Oh, it’s all the same how he sits, he’ll fall over again immediately. The main thing is to get the door shut. I don’t know,” he cursed again, “but Neulohe brings me only bad luck. Whatever I start here always turns to dirt. But I’ll get my revenge sometime. I’ll make you people sick about me yet!”
“Are already, Herr Meier! More than enough!” said Pagel, sitting beside him, and pleased at the little man’s rage. “Though if I were you I’d use the horn less; it might in the end occur to our convicts that one can get to Berlin more comfortably in a car. There, keep a little to the left … Donnerwetter! what’s this?”
A large blue and white car hooted itself round the corner just ahead.
“The Rittmeister’s Horch!” whispered Meier and drove his small car close to the trees.
The great car howled once more, rushing past.
“The Rittmeister and our charming Vi,” grinned little Meier. “Well, they didn’t recognize us. I put my hand in front of my face at once. Trying it out, I suppose. Good luck to them! The splendor certainly won’t be lasting much longer.”
“In what way, Herr Meier?” asked Pagel sarcastically. “You believe the Rittmeister will go bankrupt because you’re no longer working for him?”
Meier made no reply. He was not a very experienced driver, and the rough, sandy path through the forest required all his attention.
At last they came to the forester’s house, unloaded him and laid him on a bed. From her armchair his wife reviled them for bringing her husband home drunk, for putting him on the wrong bed, for not undressing him …
“Well, that’s that, Herr Meier!” said Pagel. Little Meier was back in the car. Pagel stretched out his hand. “Well, a good trip!”
Meier looked at Pagel and Pagel’s hand. “You know, man—I can never remember your name—you know, I’ll not shake hands, and it’s better like that. You think I’m a big swine.… But I’m not such a big swine as to shake hands with you now. So there!” And he slammed the door on the astonished Pagel and nodded through the window. It seemed to be quite another face which was nodding: a sad, wretched one. Then the car started. Pagel looked after it a while. Poor devil, he thought. Poor devil. And he meant both the “poor” and the “devil.”
Then he returned to the farm, utterly uncertain whether he should say anything or what he should say or to whom he should say it.
He would think about it—just a little too long.
Chapter Thirteen
Lost and Forsaken
I
Dawn on the thirtieth of September was overcast and sullen. The wind threw itself on Neulohe. Much would be swept away this day, love and hate, treachery, jealousy, selfishness; much blown away and the people scattered like leaves. And this although it was not yet October the first, the fateful day.
Herr von Studmann was the first to awake. It was still dark when the alarm clock went off; wind shook the house. Studmann was a man who did what he had in mind very matter-of-factly. He arose in the chilly gray morning without regret for his warm bed—today he had to find the rent and would do so, although he was fairly certain that it was to be used for quite other purposes.
He shaved himself carefully. When he went into town he always shaved twice. Now it occurred to him that he could shave himself twice for Neulohe, for Eva.… But he rejected this thought immediately. He was neither a youngster nor a Don Juan. He wasn’t going to preen like a peacock.
A little later he was in the office. On the desk lay a note. “Please wake me before you go. I’ve something to tell you, Pagel.”
Studmann shrugged his shoulders. Could it be anything important? Cautiously he opened Pagel’s door—the lamplight, entering, showed him peacefully asleep on his side. Over his forehead a great lock of hair rested on the closed eyelid, every hair gleamed like the very thinnest of gold thread, and the face was serene. All of a sudden some words came into Studmann’s mind, probably from his schooldays. “Favored by fortune, nothing done, dead like all.”
The important communication, he decided, was not important. It was only four o’clock, and another hour and a half’s sleep wouldn’t do the young man any harm. Gently he shut the door. Besides, he mustn’t miss the early train to Frankfurt, because that was what Eva wanted. Even the most important communication could not change that, but could only upset it.
Black Minna now appeared in the office, still half awake and more slovenly than ever. And the coffee she served looked just as slovenly. Studmann, who from his work in the hotel was very sensitive to cleanliness, had it in mind to speak harshly, but refrained. Knowing the situation as he did, he was aware that his reproof would promptly be made known in Frau Eva’s kitchen, and thus reach her. He didn’t want her to have any more trouble at present.
Carriage wheels crunched on the gravel outside; Hartig, the coachman, was there. Abandoning the coffee and stale bread, Studmann lit a cigar, put on his overcoat and left the house.
The coachman on his high seat was talking with the gendarme. Studmann said hello and asked after any news. There was no news. The gendarme’s all-night vigil had been as fruitless as beating through the woods the previous afternoon. Not the slightest trace of the fellows! The whole thing was stupid. They should have gone about things in quite another way, of course; numb and exasperated, the gendarme explained his own plan …
“Excuse me, officer, I have to go to the station now,” interposed Studmann. “But my coffee’s still standing in the office. It’s not much good but it’s warm—if you’d care to drink it.… But don’t make a noise, please; the young man’s asleep in the next room.”
The officer thanked him and went to the office. The carriage with the smoking Studmann and the silent, ever-grumpy Hartig, rolled toward the station. It was quarter past four.
It’s only a quarter past four, thought Frau Eva, looking unbelievingly at the small alarm clock on her night table. Had someone called her? Vi? Achim? She had started up in bed and had automatically turned on the light. Now she sat erect among the pillows, listening. Outside there was nothing but the howling of the wind. Not a cry. All were asleep. Frau Eva had slept well, and felt incredibly fresh, full of a vague happiness. But what on earth was she going to do in the four hours until her morning coffee?
She looked at her room, surprised, almost a little disappointed, that it could offer her neither distraction nor diversion. For a moment she considered getting up to see if Vi, perhaps, had called out in her sleep. But it was so warm in bed and Vi, anyway, was a grownup girl now; the time had passed when her mother, as a matter of course, rose five or six times a night, to tiptoe to her little one. Happy vanished times, obvious duties gladly performed, simple cares which life, because it was life, brought along with it … and nothing of all this unnecessary artificial worry, the least essential thing in the world.
Suddenly her face became drawn and she remembered what had been forgotten—that she lay in a decaying house, a member of a family in dissolution. And that the very floor which held her bed was decaying. The door leading to her husband’s bedroom was locked, had been locked after the angry scene yesterday evening. She frowned; her pretty plump shoulders drooped. She had suddenly become an old woman. How could I have lived with him year in, year out, and put up with all this? Impossible to live with him one week longer—and she had put up with it for twenty years! Inconceivable! She felt that she had completely lost the charity to be patient or forbearing or, in feminine cunning, achieve something with him. It seemed that with her love had vanished all capacity for this.