An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (11 page)

“Not if it is done by kindness,” said her godfather gently. “Every human being responds to kindness.”

“Yes,” said Rosemarie, and eyed him meditatively. “Mali only gave me one comforter, and all five of them are crying now. They won’t need to look for us, the noise will put them on our track. Do you want them to find us?”

“No, indeed,” cried the Professor in an agonized tone. “At least, not yet—I should like to get a little rest first.
They all talk so much and we must also decide how I am to help you.”

“Perhaps we could come and stay with you in Berlin, Godfather?”

“Yes,” said the Professor. “Yes, certainly.” And a vision of his quiet study rose before his eyes, and then a vision of Philip. “No, no, that won’t do,” he said gloomily. “I gave my promise, I can’t abandon Philip.”

“Philip?—Has he come back again?”

“Yes. The policeman had him handcuffed to his wrist.”

“We’ll have to rescue him, Godfather!” cried Rosemarie. “So we can’t go to Berlin. . . . And we couldn’t anyway,” she went on after a moment’s thought. “I must look after the farm, and they wouldn’t let me stay with you, either. They’ve got the law on their side.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the old man sadly. The thought of his quiet home in Berlin lit the surrounding darkness for a moment only to be at once extinguished.

“Godfather, dear,” said the girl softly, “couldn’t you become my guardian? The others don’t like me a bit. I could arrange for you to be quiet and comfortable here. And tomorrow we will go and see Frau von Wanzka and old Mühlenfeldt, the grocer. They are my guardians now. Please, please, dear Godfather, it will be quite simple to fix up the whole thing.”

“I don’t think I should be at all a suitable person,” said the old man reflectively. “I am not a man of the world.”

“That doesn’t matter,” cried Rosemarie. “I’ll always tell you what to do. Oh, please. . . .”

She had laid an arm round his neck and her head on
his chest. As she looked up at him, her starry eyes brimmed with shining tears, “I’m only sixteen, Godfather,” she wailed, “and I’ve had five years of this dreadful life already, first with the Gaus and then with the Schliekers. I’ve never been able to talk freely to anyone. . . . Oh yes, I have,” she recalled, sitting up and looking at him with a tearful smile, “I’ve been able to talk to the animals and the children. All the children take my part, Godfather, in the village and everywhere.”

“Then, my child,” said the old Professor, “you see that God never lays a heavier burden on us than we can bear.”

She eyed him meditatively, her white teeth against her underlip. “Will you?” she asked softly.

“I will think it over, my dear child,” said the Professor peaceably. “But you must first make some arrangement about these poor little children. Or shall we take them with us?”

The children were now quiet, they were listening to the lapping of the water and the rustle of the reeds against the boat.

“Ah yes, the children,” said Rosemarie meditatively, “bless the little brats! You can’t imagine how sweet they can be, Godfather!”

The old gentleman looked rather dubiously at the five variegated bundles.

“They shan’t go back to the Schliekers. And I know where I’ll take them. Can you steer?”

“No,” said the Professor shaking his head gloomily. “I’m afraid I shall be very little use.”

“Never mind, Godfather,” she said reassuringly. “I’ll fix up the whole lousy business. . . . Oh dear, oh dear!”
she cried, clapping her hand to her mouth, “I oughtn’t to have said ‘lousy,’ but I’ve got so used to the Schliekers’ saying it. And Godfather,” she said, thrusting the boat clear of the reeds and pulling out into the falling dusk, “it’s such a relief to be able to say a word like that.”

“A prayer, an honest prayer, would be more of a relief, and a different one,” said the Professor.

“Yes,” said Rosemarie, as she bent to her oars. “You are much older than I am, Godfather.”

Then they glided silently across the lake, until a black mass rose up in the gathering darkness, and Rosemarie said gleefully, “Just as I thought. Not a light anywhere. They’re all still at the Schliekers’.”

They tied up the boat, and the houses of Unsadel village loomed dark and deserted along the sloping shore.

“Where are you going to take the children?” asked the Professor, awaking from his meditations as Rosemarie stepped out of the boat with two of them.

“I’m going” to put them in the Tamms’ bedroom,” whispered the girl.

“Good,” said the Professor with an approving nod, “Frau Lowising Tamm is an excellent woman.”

The girl ran back and forth three times.

“There,” she said as she clambered into the boat and pushed off. “I’ve given them all a kiss and a hug. It’s very hard to leave them, but they were neglected with us. They’ll be much better off now. But what’s going to become of them later on?”

And she rowed for a long, long while across the lake. Complete darkness had fallen.

“Where are we going?” asked the Professor. The night was getting damp and cold.

“We’ll soon be there,” she replied, and her voice seemed to come from far away out of the darkness.

Time passed and then they put in at the shore.

“Come along, Godfather, here’s my hand. Now stay still, I’ll fetch your bag.”

Professor Kittguss stood with stiffened limbs and aching body, utterly exhausted in a pitch-dark wood. “What are you doing?” he asked timidly after a while.

“Pushing the boat into the current, so that it won’t be found here. Otherwise they would spot us at once.”

“And where are we to spend the night?” he asked nervously. “Not in this dark wood?”

“You’ll soon see,” she said. “There,” and she took his hand. “The boat has drifted off. Walk very slowly and carefully, Godfather. We’ll be there in a minute.”

The path, if path it could be called, led up the beach. Dry leaves rustled under their feet. Then a sort of clearing opened out before them.

“Do you see that dark mass over there?” asked Rosemarie, pointing.

“Yes, I think so,” he answered doubtfully.

“That’s the old cowshed,” said Rosemarie triumphantly. “We’ll be quite safe there.”

“Good God!” groaned the Professor.

In which Rosemarie sets up a completely illegal household

A
S THEY WALKED
up to the old cowshed, a low rambling structure looming out of the darkness, Rosemarie picked up something that looked like a stone. The sinister news that he was to spend the night in the shed had stirred the weary Professor to what powers of protest he still possessed, and he was just about to ask about this stone, and why Rosemarie had . . .

But Rosemarie was trying the door. Suddenly she dropped the stone, announcing in an astonished tone: “It isn’t locked!”

“Rosemarie!” said the Professor sternly, “you didn’t mean to open it with a stone?—”

“When I haven’t got a key, a stone does quite well,” Rosemarie replied. Then she added in a low, tense whisper: “Pssst! There’s someone inside. Keep quiet!”

It was now dark, completely dark, a starless, moonless night. But inside the building the darkness was so impenetrable that it seemed to rise before them like a wall.

For a while they stood and listened.

“But . . .” the Professor began to protest.

“Be quiet,” whispered Rosemarie, so abruptly that he recoiled. “Listen. . . .”

From the pitch-black darkness came a noise like a gurgle, a hollow gurgle; then a shuffle, then the gurgle again. Gradually it swelled into a most repellent death rattle. The pair stood hand in hand.

“In the name of God . . .” began the Professor in a low tone, raising his hand in a gesture of exorcisement.

“It’s someone asleep,” whispered Rosemarie sagely. “A tramp, I expect, who has taken refuge here. Have you got any matches?”

He had not.

“Then I must find some. I know my way around here in the dark. Keep quite still, Godfather, whatever happens. It may be a minute or two before I’m back.”

The worthy Professor was left alone in the darkness, from which issued further snores and gurgles and death rattles. And once more he felt very ill at ease; almost as he had felt in the Schliekers’ coalshed the evening before, except that matters were worse now, because his occupation of the coalshed had been legalized by the owner, whereas here. . . .

“Rosemarie—” he said softly.

“Pssst!” came a sudden hiss from by his side.

“I only wanted to ask . . .”he implored.

“Pssst!”

“But Rosemarie, I must know. . . .”

“Psssssst!”

He was in despair—here he was, a trespasser. . . there was that death rattle again. . . . What on earth
ought he to do? Suddenly someone stumbled, the death rattle stopped, and in the ensuing silence he heard Rosemarie’s voice: “Oh damn!”

A swearword. He felt he must protest, but could not. That awful choking and gurgling began again, and he was compelled to listen to it, as if spellbound.

At last, after an agonizingly long wait, he was aware of a glimmer of light. Rosemarie was coming toward him with a candle.

“Now, Godfather,” she said and took him by the hand.

And they crept toward those terrifying noises from the darkness.

“If it’s a tramp, he’ll be more afraid of you than of me, Godfather.”

It was not a tramp.

On a camp bed against the wall, asleep, with his arms over his face, as though even in sleep he were not secure from violence, lay Philip Münzer. There he was, their dark and spectral visitant, and for a few moments they stood in silence and looked down at him.

“Philip!” whispered Rosemarie. “My dear Philip.”

“Philip!” whispered the Professor likewise, and the poor half-witted face with the bruised eye seemed to him lovely in that hour, for a burden had been lifted from his soul.

“Did you run away from them?”

As the candlelight shone on to the sleeper’s face, he stirred, pressed one arm closer to his eyes, and suddenly awakened, like a beast of the forest that must always be ready to escape.

He was just about to jump up when Rosemarie exclaimed with assumed sternness: “Philip! How can you go to bed in your clothes! And with dirty boots! When did you wash last, Philip? Oh Philip, you filthy lad. . . .”

But the poor half-wit had flung himself at her feet, and was pressing her hands against his breast. He could hardly speak, he could only stutter out his joy and gratitude in the broadest of Baltic dialects, “My liddle lady, is that you? I did everything what you tell me. I see the gemman and he read the letter. . . .”

He did indeed forget to mention what
he
had endured and suffered. He asked her haltingly whether the Schliekers had been angry with her, whether she had been made to carry all the water, and whether the firewood had lasted. “Your hands are all rough, dearie. They’ve been making you do all the washing in the nasty cold lake. And when I get back, dearie, you’d gone, so I ran away too, to this old cowshed—and now you’re here!”

He stood there, beaming at her, poor fool, one whom life had left stranded forever in boyhood. And yet this village idiot carried such a power of love within him—the Professor hoped it was not irreverent, but he could not help thinking of the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: “Love . . . endureth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, suffereth all things. . . .”