An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (37 page)

The woman came into the passage where Rosemarie—under Schlieker’s charge—was mashing potatoes for the
pigs. She had a bottle in her hand, an open bottle of petroleum. She stopped, ignored the others and looked about her as though in search of something. Then she suddenly tipped the bottle upside down, spattering the oil on the floor. She stared down blankly, as though her mind was elsewhere and she did not see what she had done. And then it seemed to Rosemarie that something like a gleam of satisfaction spread over her face, the faintest semblance of a smile.

Schlieker leapt up with a curse and snatched at the bottle, but the woman held it fast. He tugged and pulled and in his voice too there was a ring of fear as he shouted: “Mali, Mali! Don’t be a fool! What are you doing?”

Paul noticed the girl’s eyes upon him. The bottle was empty, he had not been able to get it out of those small, frail hands. He seized Rosemarie by the shoulders and pushed her silently through the kitchen and the children’s room into her bedroom. The bolt shot home and Rosemarie with a gasp of relief laid her head against the cool windowpanes. Outside, she could hear Schlieker talking excitedly, but she paid no attention to what he said. She was possessed by a shapeless fear of something that was coming closer.

Allowing for every eventuality, the magistrate must arrive by seven o’clock, or by eight at the latest. If only she could hold out until then, if only nothing happened before he came! But what could happen?

Slowly, very slowly, it grew dark and the house was deathly still. She would have been so thankful now if a childish hand had thrown gravel against the window! But
the garden was empty, the dripping trees were swaying and creaking under the onslaught of the wind. The lake was dotted with small white tufts of foam. Then the rain began once more.

She reminded herself that she must tell Schlieker that her parcel of underclothes was still in the sand pit. But when he fetched her out in the darkness to milk the cows, she said nothing. It made no difference now, the end was very near at hand. In an hour the magistrate would certainly arrive.

When she had finished the milking, she fed the cattle and rubbed them down. Then she kindled the fire and cooked something for supper. They ate alone in the kitchen, Schlieker on one side of the kitchen table, she on the other with the little oil lamp between them. Dark and menacing shadows filled the kitchen. Mali was not there, not a sound could be heard in the entire house, except the wind against the windowpanes, and now and again the scratch of a fork on a plate. Any company, even Paul’s, would have been more welcome in that accursed house than the prison solitude of her room. But Schlieker sent her away immediately after the meal. She was not even allowed to wash the dishes.

“You can go to bed,” he said and seemed to listen. Then the bolt rattled home and he had gone.

Again she stood at the window looking out into the night, but the blackness now confronted her like a wall. She felt, with the vagueness of a dream, as though she had spent her whole life behind a barred window, with a sightless view on to a world that must be there, but of which she could see nothing but this blank black wall.

“The magistrate must be on his way now,” she said to
herself, for the kitchen clock had just struck half-past seven.

The house was deathly still, but she thought she could hear a rustling in the walls as if the beams were bending to their burden for the last time before they collapsed forever. Deathly still, surely the roof was cracking under some fearful strain that must bring the house down. She knew it, only a second more, and an avalanche of stone and plaster would overwhelm her. Instinctively she hunched her shoulders—then a shriek from the next room broke the breathless silence.

She shuddered and cried out in answer, but controlled herself once more. The avalanche had not fallen, Mali had had another fit, and that was all.

She waited for a while, to see whether Schlieker would fetch her out to help, but all was still; no one came. She laid her head against the wall—not a sound. Wearily she sank on to her bed and shivered as she pulled the coverlet over her knees.

Where could the magistrate be? He ought to have been here long ago. Would he never come?

Suddenly she was conscious of Schlieker standing before her, with the red stable lantern in his hand—a changed, terrified, and stricken Schlieker.

“Marie, Marie! Wake up! My wife’s gone. I was outside and heard a footstep. She’s gone and the stable’s open. Come and help me find her.”

He coughed and choked. She leapt to her feet, all her fear and weariness gone, the hour was at hand!

“Was it Mali outside?”

“No, it can’t have been. I’ll look in the stable, you search the house.”

He dashed out with the lantern and left her in the dark. She felt her way into the kitchen and groped for the kitchen lamp, but could not find it.

“I could escape now,” she thought, as she went on feeling for the lamp. Then she grew impatient, and ran across the passage into her father’s room.

“Mali! Mali!”

No answer. She came back into the passage, and felt a chill gust of air: the trapdoor to the attic must be open. She climbed up the ladder, and with her head just through the trap, she stopped.

The attic floor was ablaze with rustling, swaying, blue-edged tongues of flame and among them stood Mali, in her nightgown.

“Paul!” shrieked Rosemarie down the ladder. “Come here! The house is on fire!”

She scrambled through the hatch, ran to the woman through the licking flames that now covered the floor while Mali remained rigid and senseless in the glare, but smiling faintly.

“Mali!” she shrieked, “come away—quick!”

“Listen,” said the woman, “how it crackles! We’re free!”

A gust of wind tossed a spurt of flame into the semblance of a bunch of fiery tulips. Rosemarie watched spellbound. The blossoms swayed on long blue stalks.

“Look,” whispered the woman. “We’re free.”

Something stung Rosemarie’s hand—a white and quivering flame had darted up beside her. She seized the woman, who seemed loath to follow.

“Quick,” whispered Rosemarie.

Below, in the flickering glare that now shone through the trapdoor, stood the large black form of Schlieker.

“I—” he began. He shook his head. “I never meant this to happen. No, no,” he repeated impatiently. “Now it’s all up with everything.”

He looked at Rosemarie. A glare that grew redder every moment fell on him from above. This was the crackling and rustling that Rosemarie had heard from her room.

“I’ve always had bad luck,” said the man slowly. “And now you’ve brought me the worst luck of all, Marie.”

He stood irresolute. Suddenly he burst into a laugh, stretched out his arms and said, with a strange sob in his voice: “Well, I’m done for. The house is on fire and it was you that did it!”

He went out of the passage, and left her standing with the rigid, staring creature at her side.

When Rosemarie had dressed the helpless woman, and got her out of the house, the flames were already bursting from the roof. Shouts could be heard from the village, and the bell began to boom. The wind hurtled down upon the fire, ripped away great shreds of flame and whirled them over the stable roof out into the night.

The cows lowed in their stalls. “The cattle ought to be let out,” thought Rosemarie, so numb that she felt completely calm. But she did not move; she could not leave the woman at her side.

The flames hissed and crackled as they soared up into the night sky, but the windows on the ground floor were still dark.

“Father’s things ought to be taken out,” thought Rosemarie once more, but her limbs still refused to move.

Through the windows of the Schliekers’ bedroom she could see a scattering shower of sparks, then crash after crash of blazing beams, and the clink of broken glass.

Soon the first villagers came running up, shouting, panting, scurrying in all directions before dashing across to the stable.

“Out of the way, you women!” someone shouted as he pushed past Rosemarie.

Slowly, step by step, Rosemarie led the woman out of the rain of sparks into the garden. It was an effort to do anything, even to walk.

She stopped at a bench and sat down, drawing Mali down beside her. The house was a glowing, blazing torch. They sat and stared at it and did not move.

Here their friends found them, Professor Kittguss and Dr. Kimmknirsch, Herr Schulz and Hütefritz, staring into the flames, tearless and silent.

“Did you do it?” an inner voice asked Rosemarie. And again and again the question came: “Did I?”

In which there is eating, drinking, and dancing; but two persons stand aside

N
INE MONTHS IS NOT A GREAT WHILE
, but a great deal can happen between October and June. And it is now June, June of 1913, and on the meadows by Unsadel lake the hay is being cut. On the rooftree of a house by Unsadel lake stands the festal staff, topped with a tuft of pine needles and a bunch of fluttering ribbons. Straten, the red-faced master carpenter, has pronounced the blessing that invokes a golden table for the master and a well-stocked larder for the mistress.

The workmen nudge each other and grin a little, for it is indeed an unusual pair on whose heads these blessings have been asked: an elderly gentleman called Professor Gotthold Kittguss, and a very young maid called Rosemarie Thürke. But there was kindness and not malice in those grins; the men had learned to like the owners of that house, not merely in gratitude for many a cigar and glass of beer, but even more for kindly thoughts and friendly words.

They had knocked off work and were standing about in little groups, waiting expectantly for the gentry to lead the way to the inn, where the party was to be held to celebrate the roofing of the house. Rosemarie was still talking to Philip whom she wanted to persuade to come too.

“Philip,” she said, “my dear Philip, do come with us today, there’s going to be a little dance.”

But the lad shook his head. “No, Rosemarie, I shall stay with the house. The house mustn’t be left alone.”

She looked at him and then she laughed: “Dear old Philip, all right, I’ll send out some meat and fish for you and Bello. Come along, Godfather, Philip won’t come, he doesn’t want to leave the house alone.”

“Quite right too, Fräulein,” said the foreman, and took his place with her and the Professor at the head of the procession, while just behind them two concertinas burst into wailing music. “A growing house has to get used to life gradually. Otherwise it will never be a house, but only a stone box.”

Philip listened and watched the procession depart. Then he climbed a ladder and perched on one of the roof beams. But he was not looking out over the village, whence he could now hear bursts of laughter and music from among the houses—he was looking out across the lake.

The lake lay like a burnished mirror in the sunshine, but when Philip had watched it for a while, he detected the black speck for which he had been watching.

Then Philip clambered down from his point of vantage on the roof, fetched Bello and walked down to the waterside. In the meantime the black speck had become a boat, which the occupant was rowing gently along the shore. Philip picked up a stone and threw it toward the boat. It dropped into the water a few yards short.