Wolf Among Wolves

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.

But there sat the Rittmeister’s wife, and whereas her husband was cowardly, she was brave. Whereas he only thought of himself, she remained a comrade. Above sat the old woman, a lean, dry little bird with a pointed beak, good for pecking, and below sat the beautiful woman. She looked radiant, the country did her good, she was mature as gold-tinted wheat, there was a charm about her. When the old woman had spoken of the low-necked blouses, Studmann had not been able to prevent himself from glancing at the gently heaving silken bosom, and had lowered his eyes like a schoolboy caught in mischief.

He saw only virtues in this woman. The more distorted, the more imperfect he found the Rittmeister’s once friendly figure, all the more perfect did his wife appear to him. To be sure she was a woman, a human being, and therefore in theory imperfect—yes, she probably had her bad side. But he might have racked his brains to the utmost without finding a fault in her. She was perfect, a gift from heaven—but for whom? For a fool! For a scatter-brain!

The way she not only bore everything silently, but even smiled, trying to turn her mother’s sermon into a dialogue which would cheer up that old heap of poison! She isn’t doing it for her husband at all, suddenly thought Studmann. She is doing it for her child. She can only think as I do about him; she just saw in the hall what sort of a man he is. There’s nothing to bind them together any longer. It’s only her daughter, Violet.… And naturally she wants to keep the farm on which she has grown up.…

From condemnation to betrayal of his friend was only a step. But it must be said in Herr von Studmann’s favor that he did not think clearly about these things. The teacher was frightened at the chasm in his own heart. Herr von Studmann didn’t think. He just saw. He saw this handsome woman sitting a little lower than himself; he saw how her hair was rolled up on her neck, the beautiful white shoulders which disappeared beneath her blouse. She moved her foot, and the ankle covered by the silk stocking was beautiful. She raised her hand, her bracelets tinkled softly, and her arm was round and spotlessly white—it was Eve, the ancient, ever-young Eve.

She’d paralyzed his ability to think, to analyze, and to explain himself. Herr von Studmann was over thirty-five and hadn’t believed that he would experience this any more, with such spontaneity, such power. In fact, he didn’t really know he was experiencing it. He sat there innocently, his eyes betraying nothing. His words remained thoughtful and moderate. Yet it had happened!

If only the cursed geese had not been there! Again and again their ghosts drifted into a conversation, now gradually growing calmer, and made the old woman’s tears flow afresh. Elias came knocking, then the maid, then Amanda Backs—to say that the servant from the Villa was there with the dead geese—what should they do with them? Again and again Hubert Räder stormed the Manor, to be turned away each time. The inscrutable intriguer from the servants’ quarters was always making further attempts to hand over the corpses—thereby adding fuel to the fire.

An imploring glance from Frau Eva decided Studmann. Leaving the room out of her sight, he was again the cool businessman, familiar, as the result of years of hotel work, with every kind of servant’s trick.

He found the basement of the Manor in a state of siege. After Räder had vainly attempted to hand over the geese to each of the employees there, he had apparently undertaken to get rid of them by stealth, laying them on window sills and outside cellar doors—attempts which were, however, frustrated by the general watchfulness. But, obstinate as a mule, Hubert Räder still circled the Manor, followed by a laborer pushing the barrow with the victims. Gray, fishy, cold, the servant peered at an open window, weighed the possibilities of the hen coop.

Studmann put an end to this disorder; he sent the Manor servants about their work and gave Räder a dressing-down. But Räder was strangely cool and refractory. He seemed not to regard Herr von Studmann as having authority. He had been strictly ordered by the Rittmeister to deliver the geese—on pain of losing his job. And madam also had assented to this order.

In vain did Studmann assure him that he had just come from madam with the order that he was to take the geese away at once. Räder showed no inclination to accept this as an annulment of the Rittmeister’s command. Where was he to go with the geese, anyway? To the Villa? The Rittmeister would fire him on the spot.

Studmann should have seen in Räder a very faithful servant, but he merely found him sickeningly recalcitrant. He wanted to go back, to know what was being arranged in the large greenish-golden room—and he had been standing here for five minutes talking to this ass. At last he ordered them to follow him to the staff-house; the laborer obeyed with squeaking barrow while from the Manor basement every face stared after the procession. Räder followed, protesting—Studmann felt that he was a rather ridiculous figure.

In the office he seized the telephone. “I shall speak to the Rittmeister,” he said more mildly. “You needn’t be afraid about your job.”

Räder stood there as cool as ever. There was no reply from the Villa, and Studmann could not help casting angry glances at the servant. But they were lost on him; Räder was watching the antics of the flies round the flycatcher. When finally someone did answer, it was the cook Armgard, who announced that the Rittmeister had gone out with the young Fräulein. Räder looked as if he had been expecting this.

“Then take the geese to the Villa, Herr Räder,” said Studmann mildly. “You can put them somewhere in the cellar. I’ll arrange the matter with the Rittmeister—you need not worry.”

“I have to deliver the geese at the Manor, otherwise I’ll be sacked,” explained Hubert Räder inexorably.

“Then leave the geese here in the office, for all I care!” cried Studmann angrily. “The things have to be got out of the way, even if I have to do it myself!”

“I’m sorry,” contradicted the servant politely, “but I have to deliver them at the Manor.”

“I’ll be damned!” shouted Studmann at this pig-headedness.

“I’ll be damned!” bellowed from the doorway a stronger voice, more practised in swearing. “What are my geese doing here? What are my geese doing on this barrow? Who has killed my geese?”

Studmann left the servant standing where he was and dashed from the office. Outside stood old Geheimrat von Teschow, scarlet with rage. He roared like a wounded lion, brandishing his stick. He threatened the estate’s builder Tiede, who dodged out of the way with almost silent curses.

“If you please, Herr Geheimrat,” said Studmann with all that painfully acquired calmness which had never deserted him, even when faced with hysterical women in the hotel, not to speak of the man with the geese, “I shall—”

“Did you kill my geese? My Attila? I’ll teach you, my lad! Clear out of my farm at once! Leave my stick alone!” The stick had been dangerously near Studmann’s face. With a quick movement Studmann had hold of it.

“If you please, Herr Geheimrat,” he requested, while the other, turning blue with rage, tugged at the stick, “not here before the men!”

“The men can go to blazes!” panted the old man. “Did you worry about the men when you shot my geese? But I’m telling you I won’t tolerate you a moment longer on this farm! Comes from Berlin, thinks he’s so clever, babbles like a shyster lawyer …” The Geheimrat was delighted to be able to retaliate on Studmann for the several set-backs he had suffered, to be able to curse him in the passion of a semi-simulated rage. He was too clever actually to believe that Studmann had killed his geese, but he wanted to have full freedom to curse.

Studmann, who did not know all the implications of the goose massacre, thought the old gentleman had some reason to be enraged, but felt at the same time that this fit of passion was not quite genuine. Suddenly he let go the stick and revealed what the old man would find out anyhow. “You’re mistaken, Herr Geheimrat. Your son-in-law shot the geese. He intended only to frighten them, but unfortunately—”

“You’re lying!” shouted the old man still more angrily. “You’re lying in your throat!”

“ ‘I assume, anyway, that he intended to frighten them,” said Studmann, turning white.

“My son-in-law? You’re lying! I’ve just spent half an hour with him in the forest, and he didn’t mention a word to me about the geese! Are you suggesting that he’s a liar—a coward? No, you are lying! You are a coward!”

Studmann, very pale, had an overpowering impulse to turn round on the spot, pack his bags and depart to more peaceful fields—perhaps to Berlin. Or to stamp so hard on the old man’s toes that he would collapse at once. There stood Tiede, the estate builder, who, with open mouth and flared nostrils, was the personification of listening. Räder in the office was certainly listening to everything, and quite close, just behind the nearest bushes, was the Manor—also, without a doubt, well supplied with ears. The raging old man became ever more insulting. But Herr von Studmann had the unmistakeable feeling that this old man was only raging in order to insult him for knowing the truth.

Yes, Studmann had every inclination to turn his abilities to a more fruitful field—he had had a letter in his pocket for two days, offering him another post—and the news that the Rittmeister had not told his father-in-law of his heroic deed did nothing to diminish this inclination.

He did not doubt for a moment that the old man was speaking the truth on this point.

If, then, Studmann did not go up to his room to pack his bags—if, instead of that, he abruptly left the dead geese and the fuming old man and went toward the Manor—he was not moved to do so by the bonds of friendship nor by the memory of a beautiful helpless woman nor by a feeling of duty, but purely by the stubbornness innate in every true man. He felt that the old fellow wanted to frighten him away forever, and so he remained. He would go when it suited him and not the old man.

“Look here, sir!” shouted the Geheimrat. “What are you doing there? I forbid you to go into my park!”

Studmann went on without a word, putting Herr von Teschow at a disadvantage. If his expostulations were to reach the trespasser he had to hurry after him. A man who is normally short-winded cannot curse very well when he is running. Between jerky breaths the Geheimrat shouted: “I forbid you—to go—in my park—you are—not—to enter—my house! Elias, don’t let him in. It’s a breach of the peace. Don’t let him up!”

The door of his wife’s room slammed upstairs.

Beckoning to Elias, the old man whispered: “What does he want here?”

“Frau von Prackwitz is upstairs,” Elias whispered back.

“Breach of the peace!” bellowed the Geheimrat again. It was the cannon-shot to cover his retreat. “Been here a long time?” he whispered.

“Over two hours.”

“And Frau von Teschow?”

“Heavens, sir, both of them are crying.”

“Damn it!” whispered the old man.

“Papa,” came a gentle call from upstairs, “won’t you come up?”

“No!” he shouted. “Got to bury my Attila! Goose murderers, damn them!”

She came tripping down the stairs as quickly as if she were still seventeen, as if she were still living in his house, in that distant happy time … “Papa!” she said, taking his arm. “I need your help.”

“Don’t help murderers!” The Geheimrat flared up. “The fellow must clear out of the house, I won’t move an inch as long as he’s upstairs!”

“Now, Papa, come along.”

He had one foot on the stairs.

“You know quite well that Herr von Studmann is one of the most decent and helpful men there are. You needn’t pretend to me.” There was a strange sad note in these words.

“You shouldn’t get old, Evie,” said the old man. Angrily he called over his shoulder: “Elias! If Herr von Prackwitz, my so-called son-in-law, comes, tell him I’m not at home to him! Let him go and get another farm—today!” Quietly to his daughter: “Evie, you think you can do what you like with me. But only if my son-in-law clears out of Neulohe, understand?”

“We’ll discuss everything calmly, Papa.”

“Yes, you want to get round me, Evie,” growled the old man and squeezed her arm.

IX

Geheimrat von Teschow had spoken the truth. He had met his son-in-law in the forest, and even if the two had not chatted long, they had said “Good day” quite pleasantly. Two-fifths of the conversation that followed was devoted to deer, and three-fifths to Violet, whom her grandfather had not seen for a good while. So no time was left to speak about the goose massacre. The Geheimrat had been right on this point, too.

If, however, Herr von Studmann entertained a still lower opinion of his former friend Prackwitz because of this silence, and even cursed him for a coward, then he was scarcely in the right. Prackwitz was no coward, but moody—as moody as a young girl shedding her childhood, as moody as a young woman expecting her first baby, as moody as a prima donna who has never had one and never will. That is to say, the Rittmeister was as moody as only a woman can be. But he was no coward. He would not have hesitated a moment to tell his father-in-law about the geese and engage him in the most violent quarrel regardless of consequences—if he had felt like it. But having humored his quarrelsomeness the whole morning and a good part of the afternoon, he was now in a peaceful mood. He had spent himself; his fit of anger had vanished with the two shots.

He looked at the sweaty old man, whose forehead was covered with perspiration. The news waiting for you will make you still hotter, he thought, politely promising to ask Eva whether Violet’s detention might not be relaxed so far as to permit her to visit her grandparents.

“You’re looking thin and pale, Vi,” said her grandfather. “Well, come along, give your old granddad a kiss. Here, not so fast, must dry myself a bit first.” And he drew out a huge handkerchief, gaily printed with the insignia of St. Hubert. The Rittmeister looked away indignantly. It was revolting that this gross old man with printed cotton handkerchiefs could kiss his granddaughter and yet tease and worry him with a wretched lease. He gazed into the pines, where birds fluttered now and again in the sunny cones, and after a while he said dryly:

“We must be getting along now.”

“Of course you must,” said the old man gaily. He was by no means unaware of his son-in-law’s feelings, often deriving an unsullied pleasure from his “finicky fineness.”

“Well, one last big hug for your granddad, Vi!” And he cried out in the drunken tones of a Berlin sausage seller: “They’re warm, and fat too.…”

“Now please, Vi!” ordered the Rittmeister sharply. One couldn’t be with the old man for five minutes without getting cross with him!

“Run along, Vi. I’m not fine enough for your father. Queer though, my farm’s fine enough for him!” And with this Parthian shot the old man plodded off, chuckling with pleasure.

For a while the Rittmeister walked along in silence—he was getting annoyed again and he didn’t want that—he couldn’t stand being annoyed. With an effort he banished all thought of his father-in-law and brooded about the Horch car which he was so anxious to have. He had wanted to buy it this autumn after the first threshing, but Studmann had, of course, destroyed this hope by his long-winded calculations. And why? Just because that old miser had swindled him with a fraudulent lease!

“Your grandfather always tries to annoy me, Violet!” he complained.

“Grandpa doesn’t mean it that way, Papa,” said Violet consolingly. “Papa, I wanted to ask you something …”

“Oh, doesn’t he! He means even more than he says!” Irritably the Rittmeister slashed at the weeds bordering the path. “Yes, what did you want to ask?”

“Irma has written to me, Papa,” Violet lied boldly. “Just think, Gustel Gallwitz wants to marry!”

“Really?” asked the Rittmeister without interest, for the Gallwitzes lived in Pomerania and were in no way related to the Prackwitzes. “Whom?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Someone or other—you don’t know him, a lieutenant. But what I wanted to ask, Papa …”

“In the Reichswehr?”

“I don’t know. I think so. But, Papa …”

“Then he must have means. Or the Gallwitzes are giving her a dowry.… He certainly won’t be able to live on the miserable pittance he draws as a lieutenant.”

“But, Papa,” cried Vi in despair, since she saw her father continually going off on the wrong track, “that’s not what I mean. I want to ask something quite different. Gustel is no older than I am!”

“Well—what of it?” asked the Rittmeister, not understanding.

“But, Papa!” Vi knew very well that she would not have been allowed to carry on such a conversation with her mother, who would have smelled a rat at once. But Papa never noticed anything. “Gustel is only just fifteen! Is one allowed to marry at fifteen?”

“No!” declared the Rittmeister firmly. “Absolutely impossible! That’s seduction of min—” He bit his lips. “No, it’s not allowed. It even says so in the penal code.”

“What’s in the penal code, Papa?” cried Vi, startled.

“That little kids like you ought not to know about such things,” concluded the Rittmeister with a somewhat false heartiness. It had occurred to him just in time that Frau Eva would have been very displeased at this conversation, suspecting as she did that Violet was no longer so innocent as her parents had believed. So he added darkly: “And fellows who meddle with fifteen-year-old girls are scoundrels and go to prison—that’s in the penal code.”

“But the man might not know she is only fifteen!” cried Violet excitedly.

The Rittmeister stopped and looked at his daughter. “Whoever meddles with a girl without even knowing how old she is, is already a scoundrel. One doesn’t defend fellows like that, Violet. Now come along.”

They went on. The Rittmeister was thinking again of his father-in-law and the Horch car—there must be some way of getting it. All his acquaintances had cars; only he …

“But, Papa,” Violet began again cautiously, “he wants to marry Gustel! So the marriage must be possible, even if she is only fifteen.”

“All right, if it’s possible then it is possible—that’s his worry!” said the Rittmeister crossly. “I think you have to apply to the Home Secretary or something. Anyway, I wouldn’t let my daughter do it.”

“I wouldn’t want to, Papa,” laughed Violet. “Do you think I would? Heavens, Papa, I’m so glad to be able to walk in the forest with you. I think all men are terrible except you!” She hung on his arm and nestled against him.

“There, Vi, I’ve told your mother ten times already that your mind isn’t on men yet!” he said with pleasure, giving her arm a strong squeeze.

“Oh, Papa, you’re hurting me! But, Papa, I’m awfully interested in this about Gustel. If Irma writes it, it must be true. Tell me all about it, Papa, all about the laws, and what they have to do.”

“Now, what next, Vi! You women are all the same; when it’s a question of marriage you become as inquisitive as monkeys.”

“Monkeys, Papa! I’m not a monkey. But if the Home Secretary says yes, must the father also say yes?”

“What do you mean?” The Rittmeister was getting more and more fogged about the relevance of this cursed Pomeranian marriage. “It’s the father who first has to ask the Home Secretary for permission to marry!”

“The father? Not Gustel?”

“But she’s only fifteen, child; she’s not yet of age.”

“Supposing he makes an application to the Home Secretary—the lieutenant, I mean?”

“Gustel can never marry without the consent of old Gallwitz. I’m amazed that he gave it!”

“Never, Papa?”

“Well, at least not before her twenty-first birthday.”

“Why not before? A lot of girls marry at seventeen or eighteen, Papa.”

“Heavens, Vi, you’re driving me crazy! Those girls have obtained their father’s consent.”

“And without it …”

“Without it,” cried the Rittmeister, “no decent girl marries at all. Understand, Vi?”

“Why, of course, Papa,” she said innocently. “I’m just asking you because you know everything and no one can explain things to me as well as you can. Not even Mamma.”

“Really, Vi,” said the Rittmeister, half placated, “you’ve been asking enough today to last a lifetime.”

“Because I want to know everything about Gustel! You see, Irma writes that old Gallwitz isn’t so pleased about it, but the lieutenant is so much in love, and Gustel too—and they want to marry whatever happens. So it has to be possible, Papa!”

“Yes, Vi,” said her father. “If she’s a bad and disobedient child, she’ll run away with him and go to England. In England there’s a blacksmith, and he can marry them. But it would be a scandalous marriage—the girl would never be able to return to her parents’ house, and the lieutenant would have to take off his uniform and could never be an officer again.”

“But would they be properly married, Papa?” asked Vi sweetly.

“Yes, properly married!” cried her father, red with rage. “But without their parents’ blessing!” (The Rittmeister never went to church.) “The parents’ blessing builds up a house for the children, but the father’s curse tears it down, as it says somewhere in the Bible.” (The Rittmeister had never looked at a Bible since he had been confirmed.) “And I forbid you, Vi, ever to write to these silly geese who put such stupid thoughts into your head! You shall give me the letter as soon as we get home.”

“Yes, Papa,” said Vi obediently. “But I’ve already torn it up.”

“The cleverest thing you could have done!” growled her unsuspecting father.

The two went on in silence. The Rittmeister tried in vain to think about his Horch—disturbing thoughts kept intervening. Only when he turned his mind actively to the car’s inner arrangements and encountered the serious questions—upholstery or leather? and what color?—only then did he succeed in becoming calm again and able to walk with contentment through the beautiful sun-swept forest, at the side of a daughter who, thank Heaven, no longer asked questions.

And Violet was just as content. She knew at last what she had long wanted to know: that there was a possibility of marrying her Lieutenant. What her father had added about the parents’ curse and the taking off of the uniform did not affect this wonderful news in the least. She had always got round her father, and why not after marriage? And her Fritz was so clever; he could become anything and did not need to be a lieutenant. Since she would one day inherit, as the only child, everything here, he could just as well settle down in Neulohe and help Papa, instead of always riding round the country on a bicycle. She really didn’t know which way to turn, but didn’t notice. Her whole future seemed like a mirror garlanded with may-branches, a mirror in which she saw only her own happy face. Even if the word scoundrel had fallen on her ears for the second time today, that did not bother her. One could apply here a proverb from Jutta von Kuckhoff’s collection and say that love makes even a broomstick green: since he had become a scoundrel through love of her, she forgave him his scoundrelism. Nay, she admired the hero who, for her sake, feared neither penal code nor prison.

But all this was only vague and without any fixed form. What she saw more clearly in her daydream was the flight over land and sea to the distant kingdom of England. Suddenly she was glad that she had continued to learn English with her mother, for now she would be able to converse with the people there. And she was glad there was no more war, for then she could not have got married to him in that country.

The marrying blacksmith! Strange that it should be a smith! And she saw his smithy just like the farm smithy in Neulohe. Under a small roof were tied the horses that were to be shod, and to the right of the door leaned the huge cartwheels on which tires were to be fixed, and through the door could be seen the open fire which glowed red under the squeaking bellows. And then the smith came out, tall and dark, with a leather apron, and over the anvil Violet von Prackwitz and Lieutenant Fritz were married.

Oh, this wretched smith of Gretna Green—that it had to be a smith! Had he been a chimney sweep or a tailor he would never have caused such mischief in the heads of two generations or been the last hope of all desperate young lovers. But a smith! In this bureaucratic world of documents he appeared, to all who could not obtain documents, like a warrior of old—iron and blood, flesh and anvil-song, who married according to divine law, not according to a documentary one. He had turned so many heads, this marriage maker who grew fat on fees—why shouldn’t he also turn Vi’s? She saw the smithy and she saw the smith. He could marry, and he married. There would be no more secrecy, no desperate waiting, no confinement to her room, no shameless servant Räder and no cheeky Herr Pagel—there would only be Fritz, morning, noon and evening, day as well as night, week-days as well as Sundays.…

These dreams were so beautiful, and they had trapped Vi so completely, as if in a warm protective net, so that she no longer thought about the path or her father, but walked along quite unselfconsciously, softly humming to herself. With the daughter it was the Lieutenant; with the father it was the Horch car. Both dreamed dreams according to their age.

And thus they both received the same shock when a man stepped out of a bush, a man in a rather shabby field-gray uniform, a steel helmet on his head, a gun under his arm, and on his belt not only a holster but also half a dozen hand grenades.

This man gave the peremptory order: “Stand still!”

The Rittmeister’s desire for solitude had led him unawares deeper and deeper into the forest; father and daughter had long ago left the beaten track and were now on a kind of stalking path in an unfrequented part called the Black Dale. Here, on the extreme edge of the Teschow forest preserve, it looked gloomy and wild; only seldom did the woodsmen come to clear up and thin out the trees. The otherwise almost flat country was here all undulation, humps between which were dark little valleys where springs trickled just strongly enough to survive the summer and form a morass in which the wild boars had their almost inaccessible retreats. The firs and pines towered high, all around blackberry bushes formed impassable thickets—there was nothing here even for poachers.

In the midst of this deep solitude there now stood a heavily armed man who, quite without any legal grounds, said to the son-in-law of its owner: “Stand still!” And said it discourteously, too.

On first being startled, Violet von Prackwitz had uttered a little cry. But now she stood there calm, though breathing deeply—something said to her that this soldier was connected with her Lieutenant, whom perhaps she might even get to see again after such a long separation.…

The Rittmeister, however, who had merely said “Well!” was not so angry as one would have thought at this “Stand still!” in a place where he himself should have been the one to give the order. The man who had spoken wore a uniform, and the Rittmeister did not. And if he subscribed to any tenet, it was to the one that a uniformed man gives orders to a civilian, any civilian. This tenet he had imbibed with his mother’s milk, his whole life as officer had proved its truth—and so he immediately halted, looked at the sentry and waited for what was to happen. (Silence was appropriate. Real civilians would naturally have asked questions; an old soldier kept his mouth shut and waited.)

He was right. When the man saw that the two showed no signs of resisting or escaping, he blew a little whistle—not too loudly, not too softly. Then he said quite pleasantly: “The Lieutenant will be here at once!”

If the Rittmeister hadn’t been so absorbed in this military procedure, so long missed, he would undoubtedly have been somewhat perplexed at his daughter. She turned red, she turned white, she seized his arm, she let it go again, she gulped, she almost laughed.… But he noticed nothing of this. He was pleased, as only an ex-officer can be, that he had, after all his civilian troubles, encountered military maneuvers. He looked at the sentry benevolently, and the sentry looked benevolently at the blushing girl.

There came a rustling in the bushes, and out stepped the Lieutenant, thin, with sharp cold glance, and on his chin red stubble. Vi gazed at him with eyes that grew ever more radiant, for here at last was the Lieutenant—her Lieutenant.

But he did not look at her, nor at the Rittmeister; he stepped up to the sentry.

“Two civilians, Herr Lieutenant!” the man reported.

The Lieutenant nodded, and, as if only just noticing the pair now, he directed his sharp glance at them. What a pity Fritz wasn’t wearing a steel helmet also! She would so much have liked to see him wearing one!

But the Lieutenant, gazing thoughtfully from under a forage cap, seemed not to know Violet. He seemed also to know nothing of the Rittmeister. “Who are you?” he asked coldly.

The Rittmeister sprang to life, introduced himself, announced with military brevity that he was the son-in-law of the owner taking a walk through this, his forest—in short, highly pleased, military maneuvers—undoubtedly Reichswehr.…

“Thanks,” said the Lieutenant curtly. “Will you please go back the way you came without delay? And will you please preserve the strictest silence about this encounter? The State’s interests demand it!” He looked at the Rittmeister. “I should be obliged if you would impress this on the young lady as well.”

Vi gazed at her Fritz reproachfully, imploringly. How could she betray him, she who had successfully resisted all the blackmailing attempts of her mother! No, it was not nice of him. He was right to make no sign of recognition in front of her father, although even this pretense would not have been affected by a wink. But it was not nice of him to think that she might blab, she who was so faithful to him.

Even the Rittmeister was not pleasantly moved by so much positive strictness. This young snipe of a lieutenant was wrong to treat him as a complete civilian. He should have sensed the old officer, the comrade, even in mufti. Did the young puppy think he could throw sand in the eyes of an experienced officer? He spoke of the State’s interests. The Rittmeister, however, recognized from the patched, utterly disreputable uniforms, from the lack of any insignia, that this was not the Reichswehr, but at most what was called the “Black Reichswehr”—which hardly represented the interests of the present Government, of the present State.

His irritation at being treated in such an off-hand way, at being thought so stupid, was, however, mingled with curiosity. He wanted to find out what was going on in the district behind his back. He had already spoken in Berlin to Studmann about this disagreeable uncertainty, this foreboding ignorance—here he was at the source, here he could at last find out what was afoot, and adapt his movements accordingly.

When, therefore, the Lieutenant with renewed sternness said: “If you don’t mind!” significantly pointing to the forest path, the Rittmeister said quickly: “As I told you, I’m the owner of Neulohe—or rather the lessee. I have heard something—of certain preparations. I am—ahem!—not without influence. If I could have a short talk …”

“To what purpose?” the Lieutenant asked curtly.

“Well,” answered the Rittmeister eagerly, “I would like to know how the land lies, get a clear view of things, understand? A man has to make up his own mind.… Anyway, there are fifty men working on my farm, mostly ex-soldiers.… If necessary I could give very valuable assistance.”

“Thanks.” The Lieutenant brutally cut his stammering short. “In any case one doesn’t discuss these things before young ladies! Sentry, see that the lady and gentleman leave the place at once. Good day.” With that he dived into the bushes.…

“Fritz!” Vi had almost called, wanting to throw herself on his breast. Oh, she understood his coldness. It was as she had already feared, when he no longer came and there was no news of him: he had not forgiven her the vexation caused by her foolish love letter, he feared she might imperil his cause. For him she was a stupid blabbing little girl; he had given her up! Perhaps his heart ached too, but he gave no sign of it; he was as hard as steel. She had always known he was a hero. But she would prove that she was worthy of him; never would a soul learn anything from her, and one day …

“If you don’t mind!” ordered the sentry almost menacingly.

“Well, come along, Violet,” urged the Rittmeister, starting from his stupefaction and taking his daughter’s arm. “Why, child, you’re looking quite pale, and just before you were as red as fire. You must have had a terrible fright.”

“He was a bit rude, wasn’t he, Papa?”

“He’s an officer on duty, Vi! How would they get on if they had to give information to everyone? I’m convinced he will report to his superiors. They will make inquiries about me, and one of the gentlemen will then pay me a visit.… That’s how it is in the Army, everything has to go according to regulation.”

“But he was really nasty to you!”

“Well, a young lieutenant! Probably gets a bit too big for his boots sometimes. He’s only rude because he still feels uncertain.”

“Was he really a lieutenant? He looked—so shabby.”

“The sentry addressed him as that. They’re not regular troops.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Yes, Vi, I can understand you, you’re angry with him because he was a little rude, not courteous to a lady. But as a matter of fact, I thought he made quite a smart impression. Probably a capable young officer.”

“Really, Papa? Did you also see what beautiful well-kept hands he had?”

“No, Vi, I really didn’t notice them. But I wouldn’t have let him run around so unshaven; as I said, they’re not regular troops.”

“But, Papa …” Vi would have liked to go on playing this tender game of hide-and-seek with her father, so soothing to her heavy heart. Forester Kniebusch intervened, however. He stepped out from between two junipers and greeted them.

“Kniebusch!” cried the Rittmeister. “What are you doing here? I thought you never came to this part of the forest.”

“One has to look at every place sometimes, Herr Rittmeister,” said the forester significantly. “One thinks nothing is happening, but something always is.”

“Why, were you also back there?”

“In the Black Dale? Yes, Herr Rittmeister,” announced the forester, who was burning to reveal what he knew.

“Oh,” said the Rittmeister indifferently. “See anything special?”

“Yes.” The forester knew that a piece of news imparted at once is worth nothing. “I saw you, sir, and your daughter.”

“In the Black Dale?”

“You didn’t get as far as that, sir.”

“Oh,” said Herr von Prackwitz, displeased that another should have witnessed that annoying scene, “I suppose you saw how we were stopped?”

“Yes, Herr Rittmeister, I did.”

“Did you also hear what we said?”

“No, Herr Rittmeister, I was too far away.” There was a short anxious pause. “I was between the sentry and the other men.”

“So there were others there?” asked the Rittmeister with as much indifference as possible. “How many?”

“Thirty, Herr Rittmeister.”

“Is that so? I thought there were more. Perhaps you didn’t see them all.”

“But I was there from the beginning; I heard the car. I have to know what is going on in my forest, Herr Rittmeister. I hid myself from the beginning. Thirty men, including Lieutenant Fritz.”

“The lieutenant’s name is Fritz?” cried the Rittmeister in surprise.

“Yes,” said the forester, turning scarlet at the young Fräulein’s glance. “At least, that’s what the men call him,” he stammered in confusion. “That’s what I heard.”

“His men called him Fritz, Kniebusch?” asked the Rittmeister incredulously.

“No, no,” the forester hastened to say. “The men said Herr Lieutenant, but there was another one there—perhaps he was a lieutenant, too—who said Fritz.”

“I see,” said the Rittmeister, satisfied. “It would have been preposterous if the men had called their officer Fritz. That sort of thing doesn’t exist even among irregular troops.”

“No.” The forester corrected himself. “It was probably the other lieutenant, a very fat man.”

“They had a car, too?”

“Yes, Herr Rittmeister.” The forester was glad to get away from the dangerous topic—even at the cost of his secret. “A truck, loaded right up.”

“Did you see it? What was it carrying?”

The forester looked around; but when he saw only high and scattered trees, where no eavesdropper could be hiding, he said very quietly: “Weapons, Herr Rittmeister! Guns, ammunition boxes, hand grenades. Two light machine guns, three heavy ones.… They’re burying it all.”

The Rittmeister knew everything he wanted to know. He drew himself up more stiffly. “Listen, forester,” he said solemnly. “I hope you are aware that it will cost you your life if you talk about what you know. It is to the interest of the State that complete silence should be preserved as to what is happening here. If the Entente Commission hears of it, you will be better off if you have seen nothing! You are much too inquisitive, Kniebusch. As soon as you saw they were soldiers, you should have known the thing was in order—you shouldn’t have hidden in the bushes. Understand?”

“Yes, Herr Rittmeister,” said the forester plaintively.

“You had better forget everything, Kniebusch. If you ever think of it, you must say to yourself: ‘It was just a dream—it’s not true.’ Understand?”

“Yes, Herr Rittmeister.”

“And one more thing, Kniebusch. One doesn’t discuss such affairs of State before women—even if it is your own daughter! Remember that in future!”

“Yes, Herr Rittmeister.”

Herr von Prackwitz had avenged himself. In accordance with an old precept he had passed on the kick received, and could now walk on contentedly at his daughter’s side.

“How is your prisoner Bäumer getting on?” he asked affably.

“Oh, Herr Rittmeister, the scoundrel!” A deep sigh rent the forester’s breast. Apparently Bäumer had at last recovered consciousness, and they were treating him like a prince. They had taken him to the clinic in Frankfurt, and in a few days the forester was to confront him at his bedside.…” And I know what will happen then, Herr Rittmeister. I shan’t be allowed to speak about all the crimes he’s committed, but he’ll lie that I half killed him, although I can point out the stone in the forest on which he fell. But they won’t listen to me. The gendarme officer says they are getting out a summons against me for bodily assault or abuse of official powers. And in the end I’ll go to prison, although I’m seventy, and the poacher Bäumer—”

“Yes, yes, Kniebusch,” said the Rittmeister, very pleased that others also had their troubles, “that is just how the world is today, but you don’t understand it. We were victorious throughout the whole war and now we are the defeated. And you have been honest your whole life and are now going to prison. It’s all quite normal—take me, for instance. My father-in-law …” And for the remainder of the journey, the Rittmeister spoke consoling words to the old forester.

X

It was dark when Herr von Prackwitz arrived home with his daughter, but in spite of that his wife had not yet returned from the Manor. Vi went up to her room, while the Rittmeister paced angrily up and down. He had returned from the forest in the best of moods. He had caught a glimpse of secret military operations which pointed to the coming overthrow of the present hated Government, and even if he was going to exercise discretion in all circumstances, he could still give Eva an inkling of his new knowledge, by delicate hints.

But no Eva was there. Instead, the gun he had fired stood in his study by the window, reminding him of the silly, irritating incident. His wife had been in the Manor for five or six hours on account of an affair in which he had been clearly in the right, and his efficient friend Studmann was bound to be with her, too. It was ridiculous, it was childish, it was intolerable. The Rittmeister rang for his manservant and inquired whether his wife had left any instructions regarding supper. In a reproachful, annoyed tone he said he was hungry. Madam had left no instructions, reported Räder. Should he lay supper for the Rittmeister and the young Fräulein?

The Rittmeister decided to become a martyr and said no, he would wait. But, as the servant was going out of the door, he blurted out the question he had wanted to suppress—had the geese been delivered at the Manor?

“No, Herr Studmann would not allow me to.” The servant went.

Herr von Prackwitz found his life gray. He had been in the forest, seen interesting things, become cheerful. But hardly had he returned home when a gray pall fell over everything again. There was no escape. It was like a powerful, merciless bog which sucked him down deeper every day. He rested his head in his hands. He longed for another world in which not everything, even wife and friend, made difficulties for him. He would gladly have left Neulohe. Like all weak people, he accused an imaginary Fate: Why must all this happen to me? I don’t hurt anyone. I’m a little quick-tempered, but I don’t mean it badly, I always recover at once. I don’t make any really great demands of life; I am quite modest. Others have big cars, go to Berlin every week, have affairs with women! I live decently and am always in difficulties.…

He groaned. He was very sorry for himself. He was also very hungry. But no one bothered. No one cared what happened to him. He might be dying; no one would pay any attention, not even his wife. Supposing, in his utter desperation, he put a bullet through his head—a weaker man than he would be quite capable of doing so in this situation. Then she would come home and find him lying there. She would pull a pretty face; then, when it was too late, she would be sorry. She would realize too late what he meant to her.

The picture of his lonely death, the thought of his despairing widow, affected the Rittmeister so much that he got up, put on the light and poured himself out a vodka. Then he lit a cigarette and extinguished the light again. Huddled in a chair, his long legs stretched in front of him, he tried once again to imagine his death. But to his regret he had to admit that the picture did not have such a strong effect the second time.

Räder, this wily diplomat of the servants’ quarters, whose conduct was guided by no understandable motive, yet who had a very definite object which he pursued by thousands of stratagems and artifices—this man ascended quietly to the young Fräulein’s room, after firing the arrow designed for Herr von Studmann into the heart of his employer. She sat at the table, writing furiously.

“Well, what did Papa want?” she asked.

“The Rittmeister did not know what was happening about supper.”

“And what is happening?”

“The Rittmeister will wait.”

“If Mamma should still be at the Manor, I could take the letter myself,” she said hesitatingly.

“As the young Fräulein wishes,” said Räder coldly.

Vi folded the letter and surveyed him. That morning she had planned to hand him over to young Pagel for a good thrashing, but one couldn’t free oneself so easily from a fellow conspirator and confidant—she kept finding that she needed him. She was convinced that the Lieutenant would come to the village this evening, after burying the weapons. He hadn’t shown his face in the village for a fortnight. He’d never been away so long. Unlike the others, he hadn’t been wearing a steel helmet. Proof that he still intended to go somewhere. He would look into the tree for her message, but it would be still safer to hand him the letter personally. But she could not get away, Räder was the best messenger … and at present he was not at all impudent.…

Poor little misguided Vi! She had forgotten she had sworn to her Fritz never again to write a letter. She had forgotten she had sworn to Pagel that this affair was over. She had forgotten she had sworn to herself never again to get mixed up with Räder, who was becoming more and more uncanny. She had forgotten that she would endanger her father and her Fritz if she mentioned the buried weapons in a letter of this sort. Her heart made her forget everything, her heart prevailed over her common sense and understanding. All she thought was that she loved him, that she must justify herself to him, that she wanted to see him again at all costs, that he ought not to put her aside so coldly, that she could not wait any longer, that she needed him.

She handed the letter to the servant. “See that he gets it safely, Hubert.”

Räder’s leaden eyelids, almost violet at the corners, were lowered as he observed the young girl. He took the letter. “ ‘I can’t promise that I will find the Lieutenant.”

“Oh, you will find him, Hubert!”

“I can’t run around the whole night, Fräulein. Perhaps he won’t come. When shall I put it in the tree?”

“If you haven’t found him by twelve or one o’clock.”

“But I can’t run around as long as that, Fräulein. I have to get some sleep. I shall put it in the tree at ten.”

“No, Hubert, that’s much too early. It’s nine now already and we haven’t yet had supper. You won’t get out of the house before ten.”

“The doctors say, Fräulein, that the sleep before midnight is the healthiest sleep.”

“Hubert, don’t be so silly. You just want to annoy me again.”

“I don’t want to annoy the young Fräulein.… It’s true about the sleep. And I’d like to know, anyway, what I’m to get for this. If your parents find out I shall be dismissed, and then I won’t get a testimonial or reference.”

“How should they find out, Hubert? And what can I give you? I never get any money.”

“It needn’t be money, Fräulein.”

Hubert spoke in a low voice, and involuntarily Violet did the same. Between each quiet sentence the summer evening could be heard gliding into night with a cry from the village, with the clattering of a pail, with the buzzing amorous dance of the midges over the garden bushes.

“What do you want, then, Hubert? I really don’t know …” She avoided looking into his face. She glanced round the room as if looking for something that she could give him.… He, however, watched her more and more intently. His dead eyes came to life, a red spot appeared on his cheekbones.… “Since I am risking my reputation and my job for the young Fräulein, there’s something I should like to ask of her.”

She cast a swift glance at him and instantly looked away. Something of the fear of him she had once felt again arose in her. She strove against it, she tried to laugh, she said provokingly: “I suppose it isn’t a kiss you want from me, Hubert?”

He looked at her unmoved. Her laugh had already died away, it sounded so ugly and false. I don’t feel like laughing, she thought.

“No, not a kiss,” he said almost contemptuously. “I don’t believe in cuddling.”

“What then, Hubert? Go on, tell me.” She was burning with impatience. He had achieved what he wanted: she preferred the most fantastic request to this painful uncertainty.

“It is nothing unfitting that I ask of the young Fräulein,” he said in his cold, didactic tone. “Nor is it anything indecent.… I should just like to be allowed to place my left hand for a while on the young Fräulein’s heart.”

She said nothing. She moved her lips, she wanted to say something.

He made no movement to approach closer. He stood at the door in an attitude appropriate to a servant; he was wearing a kind of livery-jacket with gray armorial buttons; on his glistening oily head every hair was in its proper place.

“Now I have told the young Fräulein,” he said in his lifeless tone, “may I say that I intend nothing unchaste? It isn’t that I want to touch her breast.…”

She was still struck dumb. They were separated almost by the width of the room.

Hubert Räder made something like a very slight bow. She hadn’t moved and was quite still. He walked slowly across the room toward her; rigid, she saw him coming closer; no differently does the horrified victim await the murderer’s death blow.

He placed the letter on the table, turned round and walked toward the door.

She waited, waited an eternity. He had already grasped the doorknob when she moved. She cleared her throat—and Hubert Räder looked round at her.… She wanted to say something, but a spell lay over her. With a vague, unsteady movement she pointed at the letter—no longer thinking at all of letter or recipient.…

The man raised his hand to the switch near the door, and the room was in darkness.

It was so dark she could have screamed. She stood behind the table, she saw nothing of him; only the two windows on the left stood out grayly. She heard nothing of him, he always walked so quietly. If only he would come!

Not a sound, not a breath.

If only she could scream, but she couldn’t even breathe!

And then she felt his hand on her breast. No butterfly could have settled more gently on a blossom, yet with a shudder that passed through her whole body she shrank back.… The hand followed her shrinking body, laid itself in coolness over her breast.… She could shrink back no farther.… Coolness penetrated her thin summer dress, her skin, penetrated to her heart.…

Her fear was gone, she no longer felt the hand, only an ever more penetrating coolness.…

And the coolness was peace.

She wanted to think of something, she wanted to say to herself: It is only Hubert, a disgusting ridiculous fellow.… But nothing came of it. The pictures in the book on marriage drifted through her head; for a moment she saw its pages as if in bright lamplight.

Then she heard a melody from downstairs and knew it was her father. Bored with waiting, he had turned on the phonograph.

But the melody seemed to grow fainter and fainter, as if she were losing her strength in the ever-pervasive coolness. Her senses were becoming dulled, she only felt the hand … And now she felt the other … Its fingers fumbled lightly on her neck, they pushed her hair back.

Then the hand glided right round her throat; the thumb rested with a light pressure on her larynx, while the pressure on her heart increased …

She made a quick movement with her head, to free her neck from the hand—in vain, the thumb pressed on it more firmly …

But it was only the servant Hubert—he couldn’t want to choke her … She breathed with difficulty. The blood buzzed in her ears. Her head grew dizzy …

“Hubert!” she wanted to scream.

Then she was free. Struggling for breath, she stared into the darkness, which became light. At the switch stood the servant Räder, irreproachable, not a hair on his head out of place.

Downstairs could be heard the phonograph.

“Thank you very much, Fräulein,” said Räder, as unemotionally as if she had given him a tip. “The letter will be seen to.” It was in his hand again; he must have taken it from the table in the dark.

In the drive outside sounded her mother’s voice, then that of Herr von Studmann.

“Supper will be ready at once, Fräulein,” said Räder, gliding out of the room.

She looked around. It’s her room, unaltered. It was also the old, unchanged, funny servant, Räder—and she hadn’t changed either. A little painfully, as if her limbs had not yet regained their full life, she went to the mirror and looked at her throat. But nothing could be seen of the fiery red marks she had imagined. Not even the slightest reddening of the skin. He had only gripped her very gently, if indeed he had gripped her at all. Perhaps she had only imagined most of it. He was merely a crazy, disgusting fellow; when a little time had passed, so that he wouldn’t think it came from her, she must persuade Papa and Mamma to get another servant.…

Suddenly—she had already washed her face—a feeling of absolute despair came over her, as if everything were lost, as if she had gambled with her life and had lost it.… She saw her Lieutenant Fritz, first passionate and then quite cold, almost nasty to her.… She heard Armgard whispering to her mother that Hubert was a fiend, and the thought darted through her head that perhaps Hubert had also laid his hand on the fat cook’s breast, had encircled her throat—and that that was why she hated him.

Violet regarded herself in the mirror with an almost indifferent curiosity. She looked at her white flesh, she pushed down the neck of her dress. She felt so degraded that she thought the flesh must look sullied. (The same hands that had touched Armgard!) But it was white and healthy.…

“Supper, Vi!” cried her mother from downstairs.

She shook off the tormenting thoughts as a dog shakes off water from its coat. Perhaps all men were like that. All a little disgusting. She just mustn’t think of them.

She ran down the stairs, humming the tune she had heard on the phonograph. Up you go, my girl, raise your leg high!

XI

It turned out that Frau Eva and Herr von Studmann had already had supper with the old Teschows. Deeply hurt, the Rittmeister sat at table with his daughter, while the two for whom he had so heroically waited talked quietly in the adjoining room. The door stood open; the Rittmeister, muttering and growling, let slip disjointed sentences about punctuality and consideration for others, and from time to time barked at his daughter, who pleaded she had no appetite. Räder, a napkin under his arm, was the only one who had his approval. With unerring instinct he guessed which dish was wanted; he refilled the beer glass to the second.

“My dear Studmann,” shouted the Rittmeister, having at last distinctly sniffed tobacco smoke, “do me just one favor and don’t smoke, at least while I’m eating!”

“Sorry, Achim, I am smoking!” called his wife.

“So much the worse,” growled the Rittmeister.

At last he jumped up and went in to the others.

“Enjoy your supper?” asked his wife.

“Nice question when I’ve been waiting two hours for you for nothing!” Full of irritation, he poured himself out another vodka. “Listen, Eva,” he said aggressively, “Studmann has to get up at four in the morning. You should have let him go to bed rather than drag him over here. Or are you perhaps going to start on those ridiculous geese again?”

“Violet!” cried Frau Eva. “Come along now, say good night. You can go to bed, it is almost ten. Hubert, lock the doors, you are at liberty now.”

The three were alone. “Quite so, now we’ll start on the ridiculous geese again. You should at least thank your friend von Studmann; without him we shouldn’t need to discuss it, but just pack our bags and go. If it were not for him, it would have been all over with Neulohe.” Frau von Prackwitz spoke more sharply than she had ever yet done to her husband. Six hours of battle with a tearful mother and a crafty father had exhausted her patience.

“That’s fine!” cried the Rittmeister. “I’m to be thankful for being able to stay in Neulohe! What do I care for the place? I’d find a job anywhere better than the one I’ve got here. You don’t know what’s going on in the world. The Army needs officers again!”

“Let us talk calmly,” pleaded Studmann, anxiously observing the approaching storm. “You are probably right, Prackwitz; an officer’s job would suit you best. But with an army only a hundred thousand strong—”

“Ah! you already seem to think you’re a better farmer than I am, eh?”

“If,” said Frau von Prackwitz heatedly, “you care so little about Neulohe, then perhaps you’ll agree to our suggestion that you should go away for a few weeks.”

“Please, Prackwitz. Please, Frau von Prackwitz.”

“I go away!” shouted the Rittmeister. “Never! I’m staying.” And he sat down in haste, as if the two might even dispute his right to a chair. He glowered at them.

“It is unfortunately a fact,” said Studmann quietly, “that your parents-in-law are both at the moment filled with a strong prejudice against you. Your father-in-law has only one desire: to annul the lease.”

“Then let him annul it, damn him! He’ll never find another fool like me to give him three thousand hundredweights of rye as rent. Fool!”

“Since it’s impossible to keep a family today on a captain’s pension …”

“Why impossible? Thousands do it!”

“… and since the farm offers a certain basis of livelihood …”

“You were saying just the opposite this morning!”

“If the lessor is well disposed,” interjected Frau Eva. “Which your father never was in his life, my dear.”

“… your wife agreed to manage the farm alone for the next few weeks while you travel for a bit. Until your parents-in-law have calmed down sufficiently to be approached again, that is.”

“She agreed, did she?” mocked the Rittmeister bitterly. “Without asking me. Not necessary, I suppose. You just dispose of me as you like. Pretty. Very pretty. May I perhaps also be allowed to know where I am to travel?”

“I thought of …” began Studmann and felt in his pocket.

“No, don’t, Herr von Studmann,” said Frau Eva, stopping him. “Since he doesn’t want to go away, it’s no use making any suggestions. My dear Achim,” she said energetically, “if you don’t want to realize that Herr von Studmann and I talked for six hours with my parents solely on your account, then it’s useless to say another word. Who is always in difficulties with Papa? Who fired at the geese? You! And, after all, it is your future that is at stake. Violet and I can always stay in Neulohe. We annoy no one; we have no difficulties with my parents.”

“That’s enough! If I’m in your way, I can leave at once. Where to, Studmann?” The Rittmeister was mortally hurt.

“We-ell …” Studmann rubbed his nose and regarded his peevish friend. “I more or less thought … It was my idea …”

The Rittmeister gave him a dark look, but said nothing.

Studmann felt in his pocket and brought out a letter. “There’s this queer old chap, Dr. Schröck, who amused you so much, Prackwitz.”

The Rittmeister did not look like one who was amused.

“He has written to me a few times, about damages from that Baron—you remember, Prackwitz.”

The Rittmeister gave no sign of remembering.

“Well, of course, I refused everything. You know my view of the matter.”

Whether the Rittmeister knew it or not, he remained dark and silent.

Studmann continued more cheerfully, waving his letter. “And now there is this last letter from Dr. Schröck, which came the day before yesterday.… he seems to be a queer sort of chap, with strangely sudden sympathies and dislikes. You told me yourself how much he seemed to hate his patient—Baron von Bergen. Well, he seems to have taken a liking to me, which is very funny when you come to think that he’s never seen me, and that all he knows is that I fell down the hotel stairs—drunk. Well, in this letter he makes me a proposal, nothing to do with Baron von Bergen …”

Studmann became doubtful. He looked at the letter, then at his unusually silent friend, then at Frau Eva, who nodded to him encouragingly. It was actually hardly a nod, more a closing of her eyelids to mean yes. Studmann glanced again at his friend, to see whether he had noticed this signal. But Prackwitz stood silent at the window.

“Of course, it’s only an idea of mine, a suggestion … Dr. Schröck was thinking of appointing a business manager for his sanatorium. It is a rather large place, over two hundred patients, about seventy employees, huge park, a little farming, too … So, you understand, Prackwitz, there are all sorts of things to do there … And, as I said, Dr. Schröck thought of me.”

Studmann gave his friend a friendly look, but his friend didn’t return it. Instead he helped himself to another vodka and drank it down. Then he poured himself another, which he didn’t drink down. Frau Eva fidgeted in her chair and cleared her throat, but she said nothing, including nothing against the vodkas. “Naturally, Dr. Schröck doesn’t want to engage me without seeing what I’m like; even his sympathies don’t go as far as that,” continued Studmann. “He invites me to go as his guest first for a few weeks, and so that I shouldn’t feel superfluous during that time, he complains movingly about an almost Australian plague of rabbits which despoil his park and fields. He suggests I might, with the help of his ferret keeper, deal with them. He seems to be quite a practical type, the old fellow.…”

Herr von Studmann again gave his friend a friendly look. The Rittmeister looked darkly back; instead of answering, he emptied his second vodka and poured himself a third. Frau von Prackwitz drummed lightly on the arm of her chair. The burden of talking continued to rest on Studmann, and it was gradually becoming oppressive.

“Well, you’re such an enthusiastic hunter and such a fine shot, Prackwitz! And we thought—I thought—a little relaxation would do you a lot of good. Just think, the peacefulness, the good food in a sanatorium like that. And then out of doors the whole day—he says there are thousands of rabbits there.” Studmann waved the letter cheerfully. “And since I have found an occupation here, and am not very well able to get away, because of your father-in-law … You see, he wants something like a firm business-like hand … I thought if you went along in my place … As I said, the peacefulness, no irritation—and I’m convinced you would recommend me warmly for the manager’s job.” Studmann tried to laugh, but did not quite succeed.

“Well, say something, Prackwitz,” he called out with a somewhat artificial cheeriness. “Don’t stand there so gloomy and pale. Your father-in-law will calm down …”

“Very well thought out,” said the Rittmeister darkly. “Very cleverly contrived.”

“But, Prackwitz!” Studmann was taken aback. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I felt it coming,” murmured Frau Eva, leaning back and placing her hands over her ears.

And the Rittmeister did indeed burst out with double fury after his long silence. “But nothing will come of it!” he shouted, raising in menace a trembling finger. His face was deathly white. “You want to get me certified as insane! You want to lock me up in a lunatic asylum! Very cunning. Marvelous.”

“Prackwitz! I implore you! How can you think such a thing? Here, read the letter from Dr. Schröck.”

The Rittmeister pushed letter and friend aside. “Very well thought out. No, thank you! I can see through you. It’s a put-up job, a conspiracy with my father-in-law. I’m to be got out of the way. I’m to be divorced! My substitute’s on the spot, eh, Eva? But I understand everything now! The talk about the lease this morning—was it actually the real lease? Was that faked, too, like the letter, just to provoke me? And the geese!—probably lured here by you yourselves. The gun!—how did the gun come to be loaded? I put it away unloaded. Everything prepared, and then, when I fall into your trap, when I really do shoot, against my will—I swear it, against my will!—then I’m to be declared insane! Pushed off into a madhouse! Put under guard—in a padded cell …”

He seemed overcome by grief. Rage seized him anew, however. “But I refuse! I’ll not budge an inch from Neulohe! I’ll stay. You can do what you like! But perhaps you’ve already got the keepers there—the strait-jacket …” He tried to a recall a name. It came to him in a flash of inspiration. “Where is Herr Türke? Where is the attendant Türke?”

He rushed to the door. In front of him was the little hallway, quiet and still.

“They might be hiding,” he murmured to himself. “Come out, Herr Türke,” he shouted into the dark house. “Come out. You know very well I’m here.”

“Enough of this!” cried Frau Eva angrily. “There’s no need to let all the servants know you are drunk. You’re just drunk! He can never stand alcohol when he’s excited; he simply goes into a frenzy,” she whispered to Studmann.

“Mad!” the Rittmeister wailed. He stood at the window, leaning his head against the glass. “Betrayed by my own wife and friend! Put under guard! Locked up!”

“You had better go now,” she whispered to Studmann, who was possessed with the thought of urging his friend to be sensible, of explaining everything. “The only place for him now is bed. Tomorrow he’ll be sorry. He was like this once before. You know, that business with Herr von Truchsess that made my father so angry.”

“I’m not going!” shouted the Rittmeister in a new fit of rage, beating on the glass. It broke. “O-ow!” he cried, and held out his bleeding hand to his wife. “I’ve cut myself.”

She could almost have laughed at the doleful change on his face. “Yes, come upstairs, Achim; I’ll bandage it. You must go to bed instantly. You need some sleep.”

“I’m bleeding,” he muttered, miserably supporting himself on her arm. This man who had been thrice wounded in the war turned pale at a cut scarcely half an inch long.

At this spectacle Studmann considered it advisable to go. It was not the woman who was in need of protection. In a last access of unbending determination the Rittmeister bellowed after him: “I’ll never go!”

It was not surprising, it was in fact quite natural, that Rittmeister von Prackwitz should go after all—at noon the next day, in very high spirits even, and of course to Dr. Schröck, with three gun-cases and on his right hand a strip of plaster. Almost with enthusiasm he had agreed to it next morning. He had no wish to see a friend before whom he had let himself go so abominably. And he was delighted at the prospect of a change, a journey, some shooting instead of money worries; while by no means least was the thought of the elegant sanatorium, the convalescent home of aristocracy—a Baron instead of his sweating father-in-law.…

“Just see that I’m regularly sent sufficient money,” he said anxiously to his wife. “I don’t want to look a fool.” Frau Eva promised. “I think I’ll look up my tailor in Berlin,” he went on pensively. “I really haven’t got a decent hunting suit.… You’ve no objection, have you, Eva?”

Frau Eva had no objection.

“You’ve got to manage for yourselves here now. I’m only going away at your wish, don’t forget that. So no complaining if anything goes wrong. I don’t care two hoots about going away. I can shoot bunny-rabbits here, too.”

“Aren’t you going to say good-by to von Studmann, Achim?”

“Yes, of course, if you think I ought to. But I’ll pack first. And the guns have to be greased. Anyway, give him my best regards if I don’t see him. He’ll probably always be asking your father for advice now; he can’t tell winter from summer barley! You’ll get into a mess, you see!” The Rittmeister smiled cheerfully. “Still, if it gets too bad you can send for me. I’d come at once, of course. I’m not the one to bear a grudge.”

XII

Listening at the door, Violet had only heard the beginning of the quarrel. Convinced that it would go on for some time and keep her mother busy, she slipped out of the house, at the back. For a moment she stood irresolute. Ought she really to chance it? If it was found out that she had left the house at night instead of going to bed, the stubbornest lying wouldn’t save her from being packed off to a strict boarding school, as her mother had threatened. Besides, if Hubert Räder found the Lieutenant and gave him her letter, Fritz would be under her window this very night. And there was the trellis on the wall! If she went away, she might miss him.…

Everything spoke in favor of staying and waiting. But there was the warm starry August night! The air seemed like a living thing, enveloping her body. It was like a link to him, who was also outside on this soft night, perhaps quite near her. She felt her blood singing in her ears that sweet alluring song which the body voices when it is ready. Perhaps she ought to go after all.… And she felt downcast at the thought that she might wait the whole night for him in vain.…

A little patch of light in the house, almost on the ground, attracted her attention. Uncertain what it was, she approached it, glad of any diversion which put off her decision. She knelt down and peered. It was Räder’s room in the basement, empty. He must have gone out to deliver her letter, then, and she could go up to her room with an easy mind: if the Lieutenant was in Neulohe tonight, he would come to her window. The otherwise orderly Räder had forgotten in his hurry to switch off the light.

Violet was just about to get up when the door opened. It was strange and a little uncanny: she, with the whole night around her, was looking unobserved at a little bright stage. Queer and at the same time a little uncanny was also the scene which now presented itself: the person closing the door was Hubert Räder, no longer the punctilious young man in gray livery, but a somewhat ridiculous thing in a disproportionately large nightshirt with gaily trimmed border. Above this angels’ raiment, however, was the sallow fishy head with its expressionless eyes—and Violet was no longer able to think this head stupid and silly. Something like horror filled her.…

Räder went to a cupboard in the corner. In his hand he carried a glass containing a tooth-brush. He unlocked the cupboard and placed the glass inside it.… That is how men are! After experiencing that evening a sensation which was perhaps unusual, something that might perhaps be termed the rehearsal of a murder, Hubert Räder put on a nightshirt and brushed his teeth as he did every other evening.… He was not always a murderer; normally he was a very ordinary citizen; and it was this which made him so dangerous. One recognizes a tiger by its stripes, but a murderer brushes his teeth like everyone else; he is unrecognizable.

And now Violet was to see something stranger still.…

But at the moment she was not thinking of Räder. I listened at the door for five minutes at the most, she calculated. Then I came out and stood say, for three minutes, wondering whether to chance it. Hubert still had to clear the table—he did that while I was saying good night—then put away the plates and things. But he couldn’t possibly have left the house! Undress, wash, brush his teeth! And my letter?

“My letter!” she wanted to scream out; she wanted to bang on the window and ask for it back. What restrained her was not the fear of arousing the house, nor the dislike of a silly dispute with the crazy lying fellow. Oh, hang the letter! she thought suddenly, very calm. I don’t need it, I’ll find Fritz without it.… He’s probably kept it, not in order to take it to my parents, but to demand a reward again! And she felt his hand on her heart, his cold, inhuman hand. If I tell Fritz, he’ll kill him; Fritz wanted to kill little Meier for much less.… But she felt that she would not tell Fritz. This must always be kept a secret from him, whatever happened. Actually she should be horrified at having a secret in common with Räder, but she was not. There was a dismal seduction about this evil servant’s hand. She did not understand it, but she felt it.…

While all this was going through her head—and such thoughts and fears don’t take a second—Hubert Räder had knelt down at the foot of his bed. There he crouched in his long nightshirt, with clasped hands, saying his prayers like a child. But there was nothing childish about that evil head. When she saw him, scarcely three yards away, kneel down on the little stage visible only to herself, and pray, he who just before had put his hand round her throat—when she reflected that perhaps he was thanking God for being allowed to do that to her—then Violet could contain herself no longer but jumped up and ran into the night, not giving a thought to the people who ought not to see her, nor to Fritz, whom she had to see.…

She ran through the garden, on and on, and up a grass ridge between the fields. Her breast heaved. She felt as if she must run away from it all, from herself and everybody, and she threw herself down and gazed at the sky, whose impalpably deep background made the stars twinkle all the more brightly. At last she dozed off.…

But she could only have slept a very short time, the stars hadn’t shifted. It was as if she had dreamed of something very light and happy, but knew nothing more about it. A feeling of approaching danger had awakened her. Yet around her was nothing but silence and rural night. The village, too, had gone to bed, there was not a sound.…

“No, there is no danger,” she said, calming her throbbing heart. But suddenly she realized that she was alone in the fields and too far away for a cry to awake anyone in the village.… And she, who had been out in the fields and forest hundreds of times at night without even a thought of fear, was seized with a cowardly trembling that he might come in his white shirt, along the ridge, and want to lay his hand on her heart again. I would not be able to resist, she thought.

And she started to run again. Away from the Villa, whence he might follow her, she ran toward the dark mass of trees in the park. She clambered over the fence, her dress tearing on a nail, and tumbled into the grass on the other side, but jumped to her feet immediately and ran towards the swans’ pond, to the hollow tree.… She thrust her hand into the hollow, but there was no letter there; so he had already taken it and was on his way to her.…

Then she started running again, but already while she ran she realized that he’d never received the letter, that it was still with Räder, and she was gripped by a furious anger against that crook.… But the anger passed and, while she ran, she began to wonder why she was still running. There was surely no point anymore. Of course he’s no longer in the village. After such a burying of weapons you’re more likely to go home and report back than look for romantic adventures in the surrounding villages. However, although she knew she no longer needed to run, she continued to do so, as if something were chasing her, and she only stopped in her tracks when she saw a bright yellow rectangle shining through the trees. She changed her step to a cautious creeping and approached the lighted window as quietly as a cat. It stood wide open, but the curtains were drawn. She crossed the path, stepped onto the narrow grass border under the window and pushed the curtains apart. She’d been so confused that night that she didn’t for a moment think she was doing anything improper, just unusual. After casting an initial look into the room, she pushed her whole head through the curtains, and remained looking, standing, her body outside in the night, but her head in the brightly lit room.

At the table sat young Wolfgang Pagel, writing a letter. It had been a rather sad and gloomy day for him—in the morning the row with the Rittmeister, who’d thrown him out. Then the chaos with the prisoners, and the bricked-up door with the white cross, which had to be painted over. Then there was the crazy farm servant Räder with his cartload of dead geese, and Studmann with his mysterious consultations in the manor—it was all frantic and confused, as little like rural life as could be. As he eventually, angrily, swallowed down his lonely evening meal—the servant Elias had replaced Studmann—he confronted the evening, unable to sleep, unwilling to do any further work. He had thought of going to the inn or of wandering into the village and keeping an eye open for Sophie Kowalewski. All things considered, she was quite a nice girl and probably, since she had experience of Berlin, without too many airs and graces. Violet von Prackwitz, with her morning kisses, would have been more dangerous. But then he remembered that he couldn’t leave the house. He had accepted a commission, he was expecting a visitor whom he had to thrash: the stupid servant with the fishlike head, Hubert Räder. For some time, Wolfgang Pagel paced up and down his two rooms in the dusk—now in his office, now in his living room. And a bad mood certainly doesn’t improve when one paces up and down for a quarter of an hour, thinking how one is to threaten, intimidate and thrash a scoundrel. That sort of thing is best done off-hand, without any undue deliberation.

It was rather strange: whenever he occupied himself with any girl, be her name Violet, Amanda or Sophie, his thoughts always drifted in the end to Peter. Well, Peter was finally gone and forgotten, peace on her ashes; a good, pleasant girl but, as already said, peace on her ashes! Well, he could at least write to his mother, tell her something of his new life and announce for her greater comfort the liquidation of the affair with Petra Ledig. That would be much better, anyway, than merely waiting idly for a wretched fellow. Now determined, Pagel switched on the light in his living room, drew the curtains, and took his writing things from his office. He only had to remove his jacket and he was sitting comfortably and airily in casual shirt and trousers, beginning to write.

He wrote of his life in Neulohe, a little insolently, a little coarsely, as one writes when one is twenty-three years old and will not admit that anything amuses him. In five sentences he drew a picture of his employer, then of the old father-in-law who oozed craft and cunning from every buttonhole. Of past things he wrote nothing. Nothing of the picture he had taken, nothing of the disappearance of a considerable sum of money, nothing of a marriage that had vanished into air. Neither shame nor reticence prevented him from writing of these unpleasant things. But, so long as a man is young, he still believes that the past is really past, is completely finished with. He believes he can begin a new life every day and assumes fellow human beings think the same, including his mother. He does not yet know of that chain which he drags behind him his whole life long; every day, every experience, adding its new link. He doesn’t yet hear its clanking; he has not yet understood the hopeless significance of the precept: because you do this thing, you must be that.

No, at twenty-three years what is done is done, what is past is past—Wolfgang’s pen flew over the paper. Now it was busy on a picture of Studmann, the nursemaid and mentor par excellence. His mood became stimulated, his father’s spirit entered into him. He caricatured Studmann in the margin, he drew him as a rabbit gloomily sitting outside its burrow. The rabbit looked at the world wisely, and at the same time foolishly. But above all, gloomily.

Pagel, whistling with satisfaction, raised his glance and encountered the eye of young Violet von Prackwitz. “Hallo!” he said without any undue surprise. “Isn’t young Räder coming?”

She shook her head. At the same time she slid a shoulder between the curtains, and her breast laid itself gently on the window sill. This attitude opened wide the neck of her dress and gave a glimpse of her tender skin, so seductively milk-white against her throat’s dark brown.

“No,” she said, after a moment of hesitation, as if speaking reluctantly or in her sleep. “Räder still has something to do for Papa. I couldn’t send him.”

“And you, my girl?” asked Pagel with forced easiness. “Still about at this hour? Not confined to your room anymore?”

Again she delayed her answer. “I was over at my grandparents’,” she explained at last. “I wanted to let you know.”

“Thanks!” said Pagel, a little too late.

It is so quiet, warm and quiet. Her breast on the windowsill. Her mouth breathing, breathing secrets, promising fulfillment. It’s been so long.…

All is growing, ripening, thriving.… “Stay awhile—!”

“Yes.…” said Pagel, after a while, lost and dreaming.

Then all was quiet again—a quiet, still darkness. Complicit night.

“Come over here,” she whispered suddenly.

Though she whispered so softly, he started, like one who receives a blow. “Yes?” he asked, already getting up from his chair.

“Please, yes,” she whispered again, and he slowly approached. Without his knowing it, his face had taken on a bitterly determined expression, as if he tasted fruit which could not be sweet. Her face, however, bore the same expression as when she had watched the servant at his prayers; she seemed to feel horror and despair, pleasure and desire.

“Closer!” she whispered, when he stopped a pace or two in front of her. “Still closer!”

It was the seduction of the hour, and it was the seduction of hungry flesh, and it was also the seduction of her desire, which was like a net, imperceptibly closing in on him.

“Well?” he asked softly, and his face was right next to hers.

“Wouldn’t you …” she said haltingly, “wouldn’t you like to kiss me again?” And she raised her head; with a resolute and yet childish movement she offered him her lips. Suddenly tears stood in her eyes.… It was not only depravity which made her seek the pleasure of another’s embrace—it was also the fear of him who had placed his hand on her heart, and taken possession of her.…

“There!” she said faintly, and their lips met. Thus they remained for an interminable time. Her breast lay on his hand, which rested on the window sill; through her dress he felt its heaviness and ripeness, more beautiful than any fruit.… Were they crickets, chirping outside in the park?—a thin sweet melody, it might be in his blood, ever continuing without pause, as if the earth herself sang, this kind fertile mother earth which loves lovers.… His mouth remained endlessly on her lips.

Then he felt her growing uneasy. She wanted to say something. But he did not want to free her lips, did not want to interrupt the spell.… With a nimble movement she slipped her left shoulder out of her dress and with her right hand—her left was round his neck—freed her breast.

“There!” she said plaintively. “Put your hand on it—it is so cold.” And before he knew what he was doing, his hand had closed round her breast.

“Oh!” she sighed and pressed her lips more firmly against his.

What was he thinking? Was he thinking of anything at all? A flame of desire rose and rose. He thought he saw images, flying images, of a ghostly play about old times, in the theater of his imagination. The room with Madame Po, when he woke up and met Peter’s eyes.… The flame of desire continued to rise. Can’t I come with you?—That’s what she asked, or something like it, and she did go with him. And when they introduced themselves to each other in the splendour of a Berlin marble stairwell: Petra Ledig—unforgettable moments.

The crickets were still chirping away. Crickets? Crickets did not live in a park, but in houses—they were grasshoppers, locusts, that were singing outside, green, rather grotesque-looking creatures.…

There is the breast in your hand; it is only the seduction of the flesh, not love. Carefully, gently; loosen your mouth, we must not frighten the little girl—she is just depraved. But she has obtained nothing in exchange for her depravity, not even knowledge. She knows nothing of herself. She is like a sleep-walker: one must not wake her suddenly. Peter was different—oh, Peter was quite different. She knew everything—but she was as innocent as a child. What they told me at the police station can’t possibly be true. Peter was not depraved. She knew, but she was always innocent.…

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Vi, puzzled. “What are you thinking of?”

“Oh—” he said absently. “I just remembered something.”

“Remembered?”

“Yes. Remembered. I belong to another woman.” He saw the change in her face, the shock. “Just as you belong to another man,” he added hastily.

“Yes?” she asked submissively. She was so easy to guide—a young horse whose mouth was still tender, obeying every tug of the reins. “And the other woman—is that also over?”

“I thought so. But it occurred to me just now that perhaps it wasn’t.”

“Just now?”

She stood between the curtains, just as he had left her in the middle of the kiss, her hair disarranged, her breast still uncovered, her underlip trembling: the abode of pleasure, by pleasure forsaken.… She looked a pitiful figure.

“It isn’t really all over with you,” he comforted her. “You only need to wait a little, you know. It’s to his credit to have kept away for so long.”

“Do you think so?” she asked more brightly. “Do you think he’ll come again? Is it only my silly fifteen years?”

“Of course. Wait—I’ll quickly get ready. I’ll see you home. We can talk about it as we go along.” He went to the mirror and combed his hair. “Do you want a comb, too?” he called. “Here!”

He put his jacket on, washed his hands. “Let’s go!” he said, swinging himself through the window. “We can leave the light burning. I’ll be back soon.”

The night was mild and quiet, a perfect night for walking, and after their hands had twice brushed against each other he took hold of hers, and thus they continued their way, hand in hand, like two good friends.

“You know what, Vi?” said Pagel. “I want to tell you what I have just discovered.… As a matter of fact, it isn’t fitting to talk about such a thing to a young girl, but who else would tell you? Your parents certainly won’t.”

“Oh, them!” said Vi contemptuously. “They think I still believe in the stork!”

“There, you see! Absolute stick-in-the-muds. What can they be thinking of? A young girl can’t help getting ideas into her head with the popular songs nowadays. Well, listen—but how am I to tell you, my child? Damn difficult to speak about such things; one gets embarrassed, and angry at being embarrassed.…”

“Your discovery!” she reminded him.

“Oh, yes. Well, I’ve already told you I belong to another woman, but I assure you that a minute ago I didn’t know it.”

“Well!” cried Vi, stopping. “That’s a nice thing to say to me.”

“Nonsense, Vi; there’s no need to get annoyed. It’s no insult to you. You are young and pretty—and so on. Well, it’s like this: I didn’t know I belonged to the other woman. In the past, before I knew her, I just flirted around, and I thought it was always that way and always would be: one had a row, and then got another girl. Finished with one, on with the next! Girls are no different either,” he said a little shamefacedly, to excuse his crude male standpoint. “Just remember the song: ‘If I see a new man at the next street corner.’ ”

“It’s quite true; if it isn’t the one, then it’s the other!” agreed Violet.

“There, you see! That’s precisely the catch. It isn’t true. When I started with Peter—I always called my girl-friend Peter—as a matter of fact, her name was Petra.…”

“Queer name!” said Vi disapprovingly.

“Well, Violet isn’t exactly so charming either,” said Pagel crossly, but recovered himself at once. “However, that’s a matter of taste. I like the name Peter immensely. Anyway, after I’d been living with her for a year—”

“Did you really live with her?”

“Of course! What else? No one finds anything strange in that today. Well, I thought it was the same as with the previous girls; this one was nicer and that was why it was lasting a little longer. And when it did come to an end, just before I came here, I thought: All right! No use crying over spilt milk; I’ll soon get another. You know,” said Pagel pensively, “when you really come to think of it, that’s a low-down way of looking at things.… But what is one to do? Everyone talks like that, everyone acts like that, and so you think it is true.”

“It is true!” declared Vi defiantly.

“Not at all. It’s a lot of tommy-rot! That’s my discovery! I’ve been running around here in Neulohe for weeks now, and so far I’ve found it quite pleasant, but I haven’t had a real kick out of it.… In the past, I only had to wake up to be thankful merely that I was here, completely without any particular reason. Now I think, oh another bloody day. Oh well, on with you shirt—the sooner it’s used up.…”

“Just how I feel,” said Vi. “Everything bores me, too.”

“The same disease, my lady!” cried Pagel. “I’ll give you the symptoms exactly. No more enthusiasm, no more fun, and you don’t feel so fit, either.”

“I’ll tell you something,” said Violet importantly. “I read it. You’ve simply got abstinence-phenomena—especially after having lived with her.”

“Well, I’m blessed!” cried Wolfgang Pagel. “That’s pretty good for your age, Fräulein!” He began to feel misgivings. Was it right for him to tell such a young girl, precisely this young girl, of his discovery? But if she were really what her remark led him to believe, she would not have said it! Really depraved persons try to conceal their depravity. “No,” he said. “There are enough girls in the village, but I have discovered that there is not another girl at every corner. Or rather, it is another. But one is always looking for the same one; only she can make you happy. And you, too, are looking for the same one.”

She thought for a while. “I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I’m so restless, it keeps urging me on. And just now when I looked in at your window I felt as if it didn’t matter who it was, anyone could give me peace.”

“I,” said Pagel, “I have only just managed to understand it. If I see a girl, no matter how much she appeals to me, I have to compare her at once with Peter, and then I know she means nothing.”

“Do you understand it?” asked Vi, scarcely paying any attention to him. “I can’t ask anybody about such a thing. Not my parents, no one. I think of it all day, and at night I dream about it. Sometimes I think it will drive me mad. When my parents are out I creep into Papa’s room and look in the encyclopedia. From that, and from reading Räder’s book, it sounds as if it were all only the body. And often I feel it must be right, and I become sad. And at other times I say to myself: It can’t be true.”

“Of course it isn’t only the body. That’s just a silly idea people have got into their heads. If it was only the body, then everyone would suit everybody else, and yet you’ve only to look at other people to know that it can’t be so.”

“You are right,” she said. “But—perhaps several people suit several other people? Perhaps a lot? Just not all. Of course not all.”

“I now think, only one! I’m frightfully glad I’ve discovered that.”

“Herr Pagel,” she said softly.

“Yes?”

“I would very much have liked—before—to have gone into your room.”

He said nothing.

“I know it sounds horribly bad of me to say so, but it’s true,” she said defiantly. “I have to lie to everybody, even to Fritz, so to you I want to be able to tell the truth for once.”

“You’d have probably had a terrible recovery,” he said cautiously. “And me too.”

“Tell me,” she began again. “Before, at your window—were you like that because I was only fifteen, and because a man would be a scoundrel to meddle with me?”

“No!” he said astounded. “I didn’t think of that at all.”

“You see! Then my Lieutenant isn’t necessarily a scoundrel either.”

She had stopped. They often stopped on this path through the village. It was after eleven o’clock, and everyone was asleep at this hour during harvest time. She’d let go of his hand and he knew she wanted to say something.

“Well?” he asked.

“I would ever so much like to go back with you again,” she said haltingly, and yet with a desperate, imploring obstinacy.

“No, no.” His voice was quiet.

She threw her arms round his neck, she pressed him to her, she laughed and wept in one breath, she smothered him with her kisses, she wanted to seduce him … But everything went cold within him. He didn’t push her away, but held her loosely in his arms so that she didn’t fall over. He no longer forgot that she was still half a child. His mouth remained cold, and his blood, too. There was no flame anymore. But out of the darkness emerged the picture of the other girl, the unprotected one, no favored daughter, no heiress. Not at all! There’s something else, he thought suddenly, shattered and more shattered, upset now and gripped, it’s possible to have been through dirt and to have experienced bad things without becoming either dirty or bad. She … she had loved me, and was pure—but I didn’t know it! And everything she’d told him about illness and being on the game seemed not to matter. It wasn’t true! While all this was passing fleetingly through his head, her kisses and caresses pressed ever more upon him.

And Violet—I wish she’d leave off! he thought in disgust. But her own caresses seemed to make her more and more foolish, more and more mad. She moaned softly, she seized his hand and pressed it to her breast again.… I hope I won’t have to get rough with her, he thought.

Then steps sounded, very near.… At once she let go of him, and glided to the nearest fence, where she stopped with her face turned away from the village street.… Pagel, too, half turned away.

And Herr von Studmann, the eternal nursemaid—this time without knowing it—walked past. He seemed to peer at them through the darkness; yes, he even raised his hat. “Good evening!”

Pagel mumbled something, and from the fence came a sound. Was it laughing? Was it weeping? The steps died away.

“That was Herr von Studmann, Fräulein Violet.”

“Yes, I must go home quickly, my parents will be going to bed now. God, if Mamma looks into my room!” She ran along by his side. “And all for nothing! Everything goes wrong!” she burst out angrily.

“Didn’t you visit your grandparents?” asked Pagel teasingly.

“Oh rubbish!” she exclaimed angrily. “All the worse for you if you haven’t yet understood what I was looking for!”

Pagel didn’t answer, and she also remained silent.

They reached the Villa. “Thank heavens! They’re still downstairs!” But as she spoke, the Rittmeister’s light went out. The gay little windows of the staircase, ascending obliquely, lit up. “Quick, up the trellis! Perhaps I can still do it,” she cried.

They ran round the house.

“Bend down, I’ll climb on your back,” she said with a laugh. “That’s the only thing you’re good for!”

“Always glad to be of service,” declared Pagel politely. Now she was standing on him, fumbling for a hold in the lattice work. You’re no feather, he thought, noticing how cheerfully she made him feel her full weight. Then she clambered higher. He stepped into a bush, the wisteria rustled, and the bright shadow disappeared into the dark room. Pagel saw four more windows light up, and heard the Rittmeister complaining, cursing and moaning through the open window.

“Sounds pretty drunk,” he said to himself, surprised.

He started for home. “I’ve still got to write to Mama about Petra,” he thought. “She needs to make inquiries about what’s happened to her. And if I have no news in a week, I’ll go to Berlin. I’ll find her all right … Vi is difficult.… Let’s leave it.…”

The summer slowly turned to autumn, the yellow cornfields became empty, the plow made the light stubble brown. The country people said: “Yes, we’ve done it again!” spat on their hands and turned to the aftermath. Some had already started with their potatoes.

Yes, something had been achieved. A certain amount of work had been done. But when they opened the newspapers—seldom on work nights, more likely on Sundays—they read that the Cuno Government had been overthrown. The Stresemann Government was said to be more kindly disposed to the French—but the French became no friendlier. They read that there was now a strike in the Government printing department. For a while there would be no money, not even trash. They read that a war was brewing, at first only a paper war, between the Defense Minister and the President of Saxony. And they read about a battle between the Bavarian government and the central government. They read that England had given up her resistance to the occupation of the Ruhr; they read of separatist demonstrations in Aachen, Cologne, Wiesbaden, Trier; they read that the Reich had expended 3,500 billion marks in one week in subsidies for the Rhine and the Ruhr. Then they read that passive resistance there, the struggle against the unjust French occupation, had been given up at last. They read that exports had ceased, that the German economic system was destroyed; they also read of fights between separatists and police—the police, however, were bundled into prisons by the French.

At this time, during these few weeks of the harvest, the dollar had risen from 4,000,000 to 160,000,000 marks!

“What are we working for?” the people asked. “What are we living for? The world is coming to an end, everything is falling to pieces. Let us be gay and forget our shame, before we depart this world.”

Thus they thought, spoke, and behaved.

“You’re not to go, Hubert. I shall go myself. Please come with me, Herr von Studmann.… There will be a terrible quarrel, but we’ll save what we can.”

“Of course, Frau von Prackwitz,” said Studmann.

“What about me?” cried the Rittmeister. “What about me? I suppose I’m not needed any more? I’m completely superfluous, eh? Hubert, you are to go at once with the geese or you are dismissed.”

“Very good, Herr Rittmeister,” said Hubert obediently, but looking at his mistress.

“Go along now, Hubert, or I’ll throw you out!” yelled the Rittmeister in a final explosion.

“Do as the Rittmeister says, Hubert. Come along, Herr von Studmann, we must try if possible to get to my parents before Elias.” She dashed away. Studmann glanced back at the two figures in the hall, shrugged his shoulders helplessly and followed.

“Papa!” said Vi, who had been waiting anxiously for her mother to forget her for the first time in two weeks, “may I go out for a bit, and bathe?”

“Well, Vi, those two are kicking up a fuss, aren’t they? Because of a few geese! I’ll tell you what’ll happen. They’ll talk all day and night, and then everything will be left where it is.”

“Yes, Papa. And may I go bathing?”

“You know you are confined to your room, Vi,” explained the consistent father. “I can’t allow you to do what your mother has forbidden. But if you like, come with me; I’m going to the forest for a little.”

“Yes, Papa.” His daughter felt annoyed beyond measure at having spoken. For her father would certainly also have forgotten her.