AC'est le mien.
AC'est le mien.
Käte noticed it with a certain angry surprise. How indifferent the woman was. Was she not holding the child as though it were a useless burden? She was filled with envy, torturing envy, and at the same time with hot anger. That woman certainly did not deserve the child. She would have liked to have torn it out of her arms. How rough she looked, what coarse features she had, what a hard expression. She might really frighten anybody terribly with her black looks. But now--now her expression brightened; ah, she had seen the piece of money Paul had taken out of his purse.
Ugh, what a greedy expression she had now.
The fruit-picker stretched out her hand--there was a large shining silver coin--and when it was given to her, when she held it in her hand she drew a deep breath; her brown fingers closed round it tightly.
"Merci." A smile passed quickly across the sullen face in which the corners of the mouth drooped morosely, her blunted expression grew animated for a moment or two. And then she prepared to trudge away, the shapeless bundle containing the child on one arm, the heavy pail on the other.
They now saw for the first time how poor her skirt was; it had patches of all colours and sizes. Dried heather and fir-needles stuck to her matted and untidy plaits, as they hung out from the gaudily spotted cottonhandkerchief; she had an old pair of men's hobnailed shoes on her feet. They did not know whether she was old or young; her stout body and hanging breasts disfigured her, but that her face had not been ugly once upon a time could still be seen. The little one resembled her.
"You've got a pretty child," said Paul. To please his wife he started a conversation again with this woman who was so inaccessible. "How old is the boy?"
The fruit-picker shook her head and looked past the questioner apathetically. There was no getting anything out of the woman, how terribly stupid she was. The man wanted to let her go, but Käte pressed up against him and whispered: "Ask her where she lives. Where she lives--do you hear?"
"Heigh, where do you live, my good woman?"
She shook her head once more without saying a word.
"Where do you come from, I mean? From what village?"
"Je ne co'pr nay,"[A]she said curtly. But then, becoming more approachable--perhaps she hoped for a second gift of money--she began in a whining, plaintive voice: "Ne n'ava nay de pan et tat d's e'fa'ts."[B]
"You're a Walloon, aren't you?"
"Ay[C]--Longfaye." And she raised her arm and pointed in a direction in which nothing was to be seen but the heavens and the Venn.
Longfaye was a very poor village in the Venn. Paul Schlieben knew that, and was about to put his hand into his pocket again, but Käte held him back, "No, not her--not the woman--you must hand it over to the vestryman for the child, the poor child."
AJe ne comprends pas.
AJe ne comprends pas.
BNous n'avons pas de pain et tant d'enfants.
BNous n'avons pas de pain et tant d'enfants.
CYes.
CYes.
She whispered softly and very quickly in her excitement.
It was impossible for the woman to have understood anything, but her black eyes flew as quick as lightning from the gentleman to the lady, and remained fixed on the fine lady from the town full of suspicion: if she would not give her anything, why should she let them ask her any more questions? What did they want with her? With the curtest of nods and a brusque "adieu" the Walloon turned away. She walked away across the marsh calmly but with long strides; she got on quickly, her figure became smaller and smaller, and soon the faded colour of her miserable skirt was no longer recognisable in the colourless Venn.
The sun had disappeared with the child; suddenly everything became grey.
Käte stood motionless looking in the direction of Longfaye. She stood until she shivered with cold, and then hung heavily on her husband's arm; she went along to the inn with dragging feet, as though she had grown tired all at once.
The mist began to conceal the bright midday. Cold damp air, which wets more than rain, made their clothes clammy. The stinging flies from the swamps flew in big swarms through the door and windows of the inn; a smouldering peat-fire was burning within, fanned to a bright flame by means of dry fir twigs, and the flies clung to the wall near the fire-place and to the ceiling--no, they would not die yet.
Autumn had come, sun and warmth had disappeared from the Venn, it was wise to flee now.
But outside, in the depths of the wilds above the highest point in the Venn, a lonely buzzard was moving round and round in a circle, uttering the piercing triumphant cry of a wild bird. He was happy there in summer as in winter. He did not want to leave.
The vestryman of the small village in the Venn felt somewhat surprised and embarrassed when such a fine lady and gentleman drove up to his house and wished to speak to him. He went out to them, walking through the filthy water in his yard that splashed up to his knees. He did not know where he should take them to, as the little pigs and the calf were in the house and the old sow was wallowing in front of the door.
So they walked up and down the quiet village street from which the few farms lay somewhat back, whilst the carriage jolted slowly along in the deep ruts behind them.
Käte was pale, you could see from her eyes that she had only had very little sleep. But she was smiling, and a happy excitement full of expectation was written on her features, spoke in her gait; she was always a little ahead of the others.
Her husband's face was very grave. Was he not committing a great imprudence, acting in an extremely hasty manner for the sake of his wife? If it did not turn out all right?
They had had a bad night. He had brought Käte home from the inn the day before in a strangely silent and absent-minded mood. She had eaten nothing, and, feigning extreme fatigue, had gone early to bed.But when he retired to rest a few hours later he found her still awake. She was sitting up in bed with her beautiful hair hanging down her back in two long plaits, which gave her quite a youthful appearance. Her bewildered eyes gazed at him full of a strange longing, and then she threw both arms round his neck and drew his head down to her.
Her manner had been so strange, so gentle and yet so impetuous, that he asked her anxiously whether there was anything the matter with her. But she had only shaken her head and held him close in a silent embrace.
At last he thought she had fallen asleep--and she was asleep, but only for quite a short time. Then she woke again with a loud cry. She had dreamt, dreamt so vividly--oh, if he knew what she had been dreaming. Dreaming--dreaming--she sighed and tossed about, and then laughed softly to herself.
He noticed that she had something on her mind, which she would like to tell him but which she had hardly the courage to say. So he asked her.
Then she had confessed it to him, hesitatingly, shyly, and yet with so much passion that it terrified him. It was the child of which she had been thinking the whole time, of which she always must think--oh, if only she had it. She would have it, must have it. The woman had so many other children, and she--she had none. And she would be so happy with it, so unspeakably happy.
She had become more and more agitated in the darkness of the night, uninterrupted by a single word from him, by any movement--he had lain quite quietly, almost as though the surprise had paralysed him, although it could not really be called a surprise any more. What was her whole life? she had said. A constantlonging. All the love he showered on her could not replace the one thing: a child, a child.
"My dear, good husband, don't refuse it. Make me happy. No other mother on earth will be so happy--my darling husband, give me the child." Her tears were falling, her arms clasped him, her kisses rained down on his face.
"But why justthatchild? And why decide so quickly? It's no trifle--we must think it over very carefully first."
He had made objections, excuses, but she had pertinent answers ready for all. What was to be thought over very carefully? They would not come to any other result. And how could he think for a moment that the woman would perhaps not give them the child? If she did not love it, she would be glad to give it, and if she did love it, then all the more reason for her to be glad to give it, and to thank God that she knew it was so well taken care of.
"But the father, the father. Who knows whether he will agree to it?"
"Oh, the father. If the mother gives it, the father is sure to agree. One bread-eater less is always a good thing for such poor people. The poor child, perhaps it will die for want of food, and it would be so well"--she broke off--"isn't it like a dispensation of Providence that just we should come to the Venn, that just we should find it?"
He felt that she was persuading him, and he strove against it in his heart. No, if she allowed herself to be carried away by her feelings in such a manner--she was only a woman--then he, as a man, must subordinate his feelings to common sense.
And he enumerated all the difficulties to her again and again, and finally said to her: "You can't guesswhat troubles you may be preparing for yourself. If the affection you now think you feel for the child should not last? If he is not congenial to you when he grows older? Bear in mind, he is and will always be the child you have adopted."
But then she had almost flown into a passion. "How can you say such things? Do you think I am narrow-minded? Whether it is my own child or a child I have adopted is quite immaterial, as it becomes mine through its training. I will train it in my own way. That it is of your own flesh and blood has nothing to do with it. Am I only to love a child because I have borne it? Oh no. I love the child because--because it is so small, so innocent, because it must be so extremely sweet when such a helpless little creature stretches out its arms to you." And she spread out her arms and then folded them across her breast, as though she was already holding a child to her heart. "You're a man, you do not understand it. But you are so anxious to make me happy make me happy now. Dear, darling husband, you will very soon forget that it is not our own child, you will soon not remember it any more. It will say 'Father,' 'Mother' to us--and we will be its father and mother."
If she were right! He was silent, thrilled by a strange emotion. And why should she not be right? A child that one trains according to one's own method from its first year, that is removed entirely from the surroundings in which it was born, that does not know but what it is the child of its present parents, that learns to think with their thoughts and feel with their feelings, cannot have anything strange about it any more. It will become part of oneself, will be as dear, as beloved as though one had begotten it oneself.
Pictures arose before his mind's eye which he nolonger expected to see, no longer ventured to hope for. He saw his smiling wife with a smiling child on her lap; he saw himself smile, and felt a pride he had never known when he heard its soft childish voice lisp: "Fa-ther." Yes, Käte was right, all the other things that go by the name of happiness are nothing compared to this happiness. Only a father, a mother, knows what joy is.
He kissed his wife, and this kiss already meant half consent; she felt that.
"Let us drive there to-morrow, the first thing to-morrow morning," she implored, in a tone of suppressed rapture.
He endeavoured to remain calm: after they had maturely considered the matter, they would first have to talk it over with their lawyer in Berlin, and other intimate friends.
Then she lost her temper. She pouted, and then she laughed at him: was this a business matter? What had the lawyer and other people to do with such a very important, quite personal and private matter? Nobody was to be asked about it, nobody was to interfere with it. Not a single person must suspect where the child came from or who were its parents. They, he and she, were its parents, they were responsible for it, its life had begun when they took it, and they vouched for its future. This child was their work, their work entirely.
"We'll fetch it the first thing to-morrow. The sooner it gets out of that dirt and misery the better--don't you agree with me, Paul?" She did not give him a chance of saying anything more, she overwhelmed him with plans and proposals, in her sparkling vivacity; and her exuberant spirits overcame his scruples.
One can have too many scruples, be too cautious, and thus embitter every pleasure in life, he said tohimself. There was surely nothing extraordinary in what they were doing? They only picked up something that had been laid at their feet; in that way they were obeying a hint given them by Fate. And there were really no difficulties in connection with it. If they did not betray it themselves nobody would find out about the child's antecedents, and there would not be any questions asked in the village either as to what had become of it. It was a nameless, homeless little creature they were going to take away with them, of which they would make what they liked. Later on when the little one was old enough they would formally adopt it, and thus confirm also in writing what their hearts had already approved of long ago. Now the only thing left to do was to get hold of the vestryman at Longfaye, and make arrangements with the parents for the surrender of the child with his assistance.
When Paul Schlieben had come to this decision, he was troubled with the same restlessness as his wife. Oh, if only it were morning, she groaned. If anybody should steal a march on them now, if the child should no longer be there next morning? She tossed about in her impatience and fear. But her husband also turned from side to side without sleeping. How could they know whether the child was healthy? For a moment he weighed anxiously in his mind whether it would not be advisable to confide in the doctor at the baths at Spa--he might drive with them and examine the child first of all--but then he rejected the thought again. The child looked so strong. He recalled its sturdy fists, the clear look in its bright eyes--it had lain on the bare ground in the cold and wind without any protection--it must have a strong constitution. They need not trouble about that.
It was very early in the morning when husband andwife rose--weary as though all their limbs were bruised, but driven on by a kind of joyful determination.
Käte ran about the room at the hotel, so busy, so happy and excited, as though she were expecting a dear guest. She felt so sure they would bring the child back with them straightway. At all events she would commence packing the trunks, for when they had got it they would want to get home, home as quickly as possible. "The hotel is no place for such a little darling. It must have its nursery, a bright room with flowered curtains--but dark ones besides to draw in front of the windows so as to subdue the light when it goes to sleep--otherwise everything must be bright, light, airy. And there must be a baby's chest-of-drawers there with all the many bottles and basins, and its little bath, its bed with the white muslin curtains behind which you can see it lying with red cheeks, its little fist near its head, slumbering soundly."
She was so young-looking, so lovely in her joyful expectation, that her husband was charmed with her. Did not the sunshine seem to be coming now for which he had been waiting so long in vain? It preceded the child, fell on its path, making it clear and bright.
Both husband and wife were full of excitement as they drove to Longfaye. They had taken a comfortable landau that could be closed that day, instead of the light carriage for two in which they generally made their excursions. It might be too cold for the child on the way back. Rugs and cloaks and shawls were packed in it, quite a large choice.
Paul Schlieben had taken his papers with him. They would hardly be likely to want any proof of his identity, but he stuck them into his pocket as a precaution, so as to provide against any delay that might be caused by their absence. He had been told that the vestrymanwas quite a sensible man, so everything would be settled smoothly.
As the rowan trees on both sides of the road bowed their tops under their autumn load of red berries, so the heads of both husband and wife were bowed under a flood of thoughts full of promise. The trees flew quickly past the carriage as it rolled along, and so did their lives' different stages past their agitated minds. Fifteen years of married life--long years when one is expecting something first with confidence, then with patience, then with faint-heartedness, then with longing, with a longing that is kept more and more secret as the years go by, and that becomes more and more burning on account of the secrecy. Now the fulfilment was at hand--a fulfilment certainly different from what husbands and wives who love each other picture to themselves, but still a fulfilment.
That old sentence in the Bible came into the woman's mind and would not be banished:But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son.Oh, this child from a strange, from an unknown land, from a land that had neither fields nor fruits, and was not blessed with rich harvests, this child was a gift from God, given by His goodness. She bowed her head full of gratitude, as though she had received a blessing.
And the man pressed his wife's hand gently, and she returned the pressure. They remained sitting hand in hand. His glance sought hers and she blushed. She loved him again as in the first year of her marriage--no, she loved him much more now, for now, now he gave her the happiness of her life, the child.
Her eyes that were full of bliss swept over the poor Venn district, which looked brown and desolate, and which was still a fairyland full of the most glorious wonders.
"Didn't I know it?" she murmured triumphantly, although trembling with an agitation that was almost superstitious. "I felt it--here--here."
She could hardly wait until they reached the village hi the Venn, oh, how far away from the world it lay, so quite forgotten. And so poor. But the poverty did not terrify her, nor the dirt--the result of the poverty; she was going to take the child away with her now, to take him where there was culture and prosperity, and he would never know that he had lain on the bare ground instead of in a soft bed. She thought of Moses. As he had been found in the bulrushes on the banks of the Nile, so she had found him on the grass in the Venn--would he become a great man like him? Desires, prayers, hopes, and a hundred feelings she had not known before agitated her mind.
Paul Schlieben had some difficulty in making the vestryman understand him. It was not because the man was a Walloon who hardly understood German, for Nikolas Rocherath of "Good Hope"--his house having received that name because it could be seen a good distance off in the Venn, it being the largest in the village--was a German, but because he could not understand what the gentleman meant.
What did he want with Lisa Solheid's Jean-Pierre? Adopt him? He looked quite puzzled at first, and then he got offended. No, even if he was nothing but a simple peasant, he would not let the gentleman make a fool of him.
It was only by degrees that Schlieben could convince him that his intentions were serious. But the old man still continued to rub his stubbly chin doubtfully and cast suspicious glances at the lady and gentleman, who had broken in on his solitude so unexpectedly. It was only when Käte, wearied and tortured by the longexplanation, seized hold of his arm impatiently, and looking into his face cried impetuously, almost angrily, "For goodness' sake do understand. We have no child, but we want a child--now do you understand it?"--that he understood.
No child--oh dear! No child! Then people do not know what they are living for. Now he nodded comprehendingly, and, casting a compassionate look at the lady who was so rich, so finely dressed and still had no children, he became much more approachable. So they were so pleased with Lisa Solheid's Jean-Pierre that they wanted to take him to Berlin with them? How lucky the boy was. Lisa would not be able to believe it. But nobody would begrudge her it. Nobody in Longfaye was as poor as she; many a day she did not know how to get sufficient food for herself and her five. Formerly, whilst her husband was alive----
What, her husband was not alive? She was a widow? Paul Schlieben interrupted the vestryman, and drew a long breath as though of relief. Although he had never spoken of it, he had always had a secret fear of the father: if he turned out to be a drunkard or a ne'er-do-well? A load fell from his mind now--he was dead, he could not do any more harm. Or had he died of an illness after all, of a wasting disease that is handed down to children and children's children? He had been told that the mists on the Venn and the sudden changes in the temperature may easily be injurious to the lungs and throat--added to that hard work and bad food--surely the young man had not died of consumption? He asked the question anxiously.
But Nikolas Rocherath laughed. No, Michel Solheid had never known a day's illness all his life, and had not died of any illness. He had worked at the machine factory at Verviers, covered with black soot and nakedto the waist. Cold and heat had had no effect on him. And he used to come over from Verviers every Saturday and spend Sunday with his family. And it had been the Saturday before the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul somewhat over a year ago now, and Michel had bought his wife a side of bacon and one or two pounds of coffee for the money he had earned for overtime.
"You must know, sir, everything is much too dear for us here, and it is much cheaper on the other side of the frontier," said the old man in a troubled voice; then, raising his fist slowly, he shook it at the Venn that lay there so peaceful and remote from the world. "But they were soon on his tracks. They came after him from the Baraque--the accursed douaniers. Three, four of them. Now you must know that Michel could run as well as any of them. If he had thrown his parcel behind a bush and run, they would never have caught him. But no, he would not, he would have felt ashamed of himself if he had done so. So in order not to let them know where he was going, he ran to the left through the Walloon Venn in the direction of Hill instead of to the right. Then on through Clefay and Neckel,[A]and so on in all directions, and in this manner he got away from the neighbourhood he knew as well as he knew his own pocket. They were close at his heels above the Pannensterz. And they ran after him calling out 'Stop!'
AWooded districts in the High Venn.
AWooded districts in the High Venn.
"Look you, sir, if he had run into the Great Haard then and hidden in the thicket there, they would never have found him without a dog. But he lost his head, and ran out of the bushes straight across the Venn.
"'Halt!--Stop!'--and a third time 'Halt!' But he bounded along like a stag. Then one of them pulled his trigger and--Jesus Christ have mercy upon us, now andat the hour of our death!"--the vestryman devoutly made the sign of the cross and then wiped his nose with the back of his hand--"the shot pierced the side of bacon and went into his back, in from behind, out at the front. Then Solheid turned a somersault. It was a shame. Such a fine fellow, for a side of bacon.
"He still lived for over an hour. He told them that he was Solheid from Longfaye, and that they should fetch his wife.
"I was just cutting my hedge that day, when somebody came running up. And I started off with Lisa, who was six months gone with Jean-Pierre at the time. But when we came there it was already too late.
"They had left him lying not far from the large cross. They had wanted to carry him to a house at Ruitzhof, but he had said 'Leave me. I'll die here.' And he gazed at the sun.
"Sir, it was as large and red in the sky that day--as large--as it will be on the Day of Judgment. Sir, he was bathed in sweat and blood--they had chased him for hours--but he still enjoyed gazing at the sun.
"Sir, the fellow who had shot him was almost out of his mind; he held him on his knees and wept. Sir, no,"--the vestryman gave himself a shake and his gestures expressed the aversion he felt--"I would not like to be a douanier!"
The old man's voice had grown deeper and hoarser--it was a sign of the sympathy he felt--now it got its former even-tempered ring again. "If it's agreeable to you, ma'am, we'll go now."
"Oh, the child, the poor child," whispered Käte, quite shaken.
"Do you think the widow will part with her youngest child?" asked Paul Schlieben, seized with a suddenfear. This child that had been born after its father's death--was it possible?
"Oh!" the old man rocked his head to and fro and chuckled. "If you give a good sum for it. She has enough of them."
Nikolas Rocherath was quite the peasant again now; it was no longer the same man who had spoken of the sun in the Venn and Solheid's death. The point now was to get as much out of these people as possible, to fleece a stranger and a townsman into the bargain to the best of his ability.
"Hundred thalers would not be too much to ask," he said, blinking sideways at the gentleman's grave face. What a lot of money he must have, why, not a muscle of his face had moved.
The old peasant had been used to haggling all his life when trading in cattle, now he gazed at the strange gentleman full of admiration for such wealth. He led the way to Solheid's cottage with alacrity.
Like all the houses in the village, the Solheids' cottage stood quite alone behind a hedge that reached as high as the gable. But the hedge, which was to protect it against the storms that raged in the Venn and the heavy snowdrifts, was not thick any longer; you could see that there was no man's hand there to take care of it. The hornbeams had shot up irregularly; dead branches lashed by the wind from the Venn stretched themselves in the air like accusing fingers.
Ugh, it must be icy cold there in the winter. Käte involuntarily drew her cloak of soft cloth lined with silk more tightly round her. And it must be doubly dark there on dark days. Hardly any light found its way through the tiny windows owing to the protecting hedge, and the roof hung low over the entrance. There were no steps, you walked straight into the room.
The vestryman rattled the iron knocker on the door, which had once been painted green but had no colour left now. The sound reverberated through the building, but the door did not open when they tried it. The woman was probably among the berries, and the children with her. The hungry screams of the youngest one was all that was heard inside the locked cottage.
The poor child--oh, she had left it alone again. Käte trembled with excitement, its screams sounded to her like a call for help.
The vestryman sat down calmly on the chopping-block in front of the door and drew his pipe out of the pocket of his blue linen smock, which he had hastily drawn over his working coat in honour of the lady and the gentleman. Now they would have to wait.
The husband and wife looked at each other much disappointed. Wait? Käte had refused the seat on the chopping-block, which the old man had offered her with a certain gallantry. She could not rest, she walked restlessly up and down in front of the little window, trying in vain to look through the dark pane.
The child inside screamed more and more loudly. Old Rocherath laughed: what a roar that was to be sure, Jean-Pierre had powerful lungs.
Käte could not listen to the screams any longer, they tortured her both bodily and mentally. Oh, how they made her ears tingle. She covered them with her hands. And her heart trembled with compassion and anger: how could its mother remain away so long?
Her brow was wet with perspiration. She stared at the Venn, at the bare, treeless, tortuous path with burning impatient eyes. At last she saw some figures--at last!--and yet her breath stopped all at once, her heart ceased to beat and then suddenly went hammering on at a furious pace as if mad. There came the child's mother!
Lisa Solheid was carrying a bundle of fagots on her back, which was fastened round her shoulders with a rope The load was so heavy that it quite weighed her down, bending her head forward. Three children--their small feet in clumsy shoes with big nails in them--stamped along in front of their mother, whilst a fourth was clinging to her skirt. It had also been looking for cranberries, and its little hands were coloured red like those of its older sister and brothers, who were carrying pails, measure and comb.
Pretty children, all four of them. They had the same dark eyes as little Jean-Pierre, and they stared with them half boldly, half timidly at the strange lady who was smiling at them.
The woman did not recognise the lady and gentleman again who had given her a present in the Venn the day before--or did she only pretend not to?
The rope which had kept the bundle together had cut deep into her shoulders and bosom, now she undid it and threw off the burden with a powerful jerk; and then, seizing hold of the axe lying near the chopping-block, she began to chop up a couple of big branches with powerful strokes.
"Hallo, Lisa," said the vestryman, "when you have chopped sufficient wood to cook the cranberries, just wait a bit."
She looked up at him for a moment. The strange lady and gentleman had gone a little aside--without previous arrangement. Let the vestryman tell her first. It was not so simple a matter as they had imagined. She was not very approachable.
Not a feature changed in the woman's reserved face; she went on with her work in silence, her lips compressed. The wood was split up by means of her powerful blows, and the pieces flew around her. Was she listening at all to what the man was saying to her?
Yes--the spectators exchanged a hasty glance--and now she was answering too in a more lively manner than they would have supposed, judging from her sullen appearance.
Lisa Solheid raised her arm and pointed to the cottage in which the little one was still screaming. Her speech--an almost barbaric dialect--sounded rough, they understood nothing of it except a French word here and there. The vestryman spoke Walloon too. Both of thembecame excited, raised their voices and spoke to each other in a loud voice; it sounded almost like quarrelling.
They did not seem to agree. Käte listened in suppressed terror. Would she give it? Would he get it from her?
She pulled her husband's sleeve when nobody was looking. "Offer more, give her some more, a hundred thalers is much too little." And he must also promise the peasant something for his trouble. A hundred, two hundred, three hundred, a hundred times a hundred would not be too much. Oh, how the poor child was screaming. She could hardly bear to stand outside the door doing nothing any longer.
Little Jean-Pierre's sister and brothers--a beautiful girl with untidy hair and three younger brothers--stood with their fingers in their mouths, their dirty noses unwiped, and did not move from the spot.
Their mother spoke to them angrily, "Off with you!" And they darted off, one almost tumbling over another. They scraped the key out of the little hole under the door, and the biggest of them thrust it into the rusty lock, and, standing on her toes, turned it with all the strength of her small hands.
Then the woman turned to the strange lady and gentleman; she made a gesture of invitation with her thin right hand: "Entrez."
They stepped in. It was so low inside that Paul Schlieben had to bend his head so as not to knock against the beams in the ceiling, and so dark that it took a considerable time before they could distinguish anything at all. It could not have been poorer anywhere--one single room in all. The hearth was formed of unhewn stones roughly put together, above it hung the kettle in an iron chain that was made fast to the blackened beam; the smoke from the smouldering peat ascendedinto the wide sooty chimney. A couple of earthenware plates in the plate-rack--cracked but with gay-coloured flowers on them--a couple of dented pewter vessels, a milk-pail, a wooden tub, a long bench behind the table, on the table half a loaf of bread and a knife, a few clothes on some nails, the double bed built half into the wall, in which the widow no doubt slept with the children now, and little Jean-Pierre's clumsy wooden cradle in front of it--that was all.
Really all? Käte looked round, shivering a little in the cold dark room that was as damp as a cellar. Oh, how poor and comfortless. There were no ornaments, nothing to decorate it. Oh yes, there was a glaringly gaudy picture of the Virgin Mary--a coarse colour-print on thin paper--a vessel for holy water made of white china beneath it, and there on the other wall close to the window so that the sparse light fell on it the picture of a soldier. A framed and glazed picture in three divisions; the same foot-soldier taken three times. To the left, shouldering his arms, on guard before the black and white sentry-box--to the right, ready to march with knapsack and cooking utensils strapped on his back, bread-bag and field-flask at his side, gun at his feet--in the centre, in full dress uniform as a lance-corporal, with his hand to his helmet saluting.
That was no doubt the man, Michel Solheid as a soldier. Käte cast a timid glance at the picture--that man had been shot in the Venn whilst smuggling. How terrible! She heard the old man tell the story once more, saw the bleeding man lying in the heather, and the horror of his tragic end made her shudder. Her glance fell on the picture again and again, the usual picture of a soldier which told nothing whatever in its stereotyped inanity, and then on little Jean-Pierre's cradle. Did he resemble his father much?
Paul Schlieben had expected his wife to speak--she would of course know best what to say to the other woman--but she was silent. And the vestryman did not say anything either; as he had started the negotiations he considered it polite to let the gentleman speak now. And Lisa Solheid was also silent. All she did was to drive away the children, who wanted to fall upon the hard bread on the table with ravenous appetites, with a silent gesture. Then she stood quietly beside the cradle, her right hand, which still held the axe with which she had cut the wood, hanging loosely by her side. Her face was gloomy, forbidding, and still a struggle was reflected on it.
Paul Schlieben cleared his throat. He would have preferred some other person to have settled the matter for him, but, as this other person was not there and the vestryman only looked at him expectantly, he was compelled to speak. With an affability which might have been taken for condescension but which was nothing but embarrassment he said: "Frau Solheid, the vestryman will have told you what has brought us to you--do you understand me, my good woman?"
She nodded.
"It's our intention to take your youngest child away with us"--he hesitated, for she had made a movement as though she wanted to deny it--"as our own, to adopt it. Do you understand?"
She did not answer, but he continued with as much haste as if she had said yes. "We will treat it as if it really were our own. We shall be able to do more for it than you would, of course, and we----"
"Oh, and we'll love it so," his wife broke in.
The black-eyed woman turned her head slowly to the side where the fair-haired lady was standing. It was a peculiar look with which she scanned the stranger, whohad now approached the cradle. Was it a scrutinising look or a forbidding one? A friendly or unfriendly one?
Käte looked at the child with longing eyes. It was no longer crying, it even smiled, and now--now it stretched out its little arms. Oh, it was already so intelligent, it was looking at her, it noticed already that she was fond of it. It tried to get up--oh, it wanted to go to her, to her!
Her face flushed with joy. She had already stretched out her hands to take the child, when its mother pushed herself in front of the cradle like a wall.
"Neni,"[A]she said in Walloon, in a hard voice. She raised her empty left hand to ward Käte off. And then she made the sign of the cross on the child's forehead and then on its breast.
ANon.
ANon.
But why, why would she not give it all at once? Käte trembled with dismay. She cast an imploring look at her husband, as much as to say: "Help me. I must have the child."
And then her husband said what he wanted to say before when his wife had cut him short: "We will secure your child's future. Do you know what that means, my good woman? It will never have to trouble about its daily bread--never have to hunger. Never have to work to prolong its life--only work for the pleasure of working. Do you understand?"
Work--for the pleasure of working? The woman shook her head, she did not understand him. But then the words came into her mind: never hunger!--and a light shone in her dull eyes. Never hunger--ah, the woman understood that; and still she shook her head again: "Neni!"
She pointed to herself and the other children, and then to the great Venn outside with a comprehensive gesture:
"Nos avans tortos faim."[A]She shrugged her shoulders with the equanimity of one who is accustomed to it, and it even looked as though she wanted to smile; the corners of her sullen mouth did not droop quite so much, her lips that were generally tightly closed showed her strong healthy teeth.
The vestryman stepped in now: "'Pon my word, Lisa, to hunger is surely no pleasure. Good heavens, how can you be so foolish! The child will be taken from hell to heaven. Remember what I've told you, the lady and gentleman are rich, very rich, and they are mad on the child--quick, give it to them, you still have four."
Still four! She nodded reflectively, but then she threw her head back, and a look--now it was plain, something like hatred flickered in it--flew to the others standing there so rich, so fine, with rings on their ringers, and at whom her Jean-Pierre was peeping. "Neni!" She repeated it once more and still more curtly and more obstinately than before.
But the vestryman was tenacious, he knew the people he had to deal with. "You must think it over," he said persuasively. "And they'll give you a good sum, I tell you--won't you?" he asked, turning to the gentleman. "Haven't you said you weren't particular to a coin or two in the case of such a poor woman?"
"No, certainly not," assured Paul. And Käte was too precipitate again. "It does not matter at all to us--we will gladly give what she asks--oh, the dear child!"
"Dju n' vous nin,"[B]muttered the woman.