An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (8 page)

But the moment passed, the horses trotted on, leaving the wretched little object on the gate behind. Only Maxe snorted savagely, and said: “I’ll teach that little scamp to sit tootling on a gate. His cows are always getting into our clover.”

To which the Professor replied hastily: “Oh, my dear sir, I hope you will do nothing of the kind.”

Then the pair fell silent until the hedges came to an end, and the land broadened out into an expanse of fields. The slate-black church tower of Kriwitz emerged over a low ridge. “We’ll just catch the train,” Maxe remarked.

But as he spoke he checked his horses, and stared in bewilderment at a strange procession that appeared round the corner of the street. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . deaconesses, in black cloaks and white hoods, approaching in single file, each carrying a little bag. Nearer they came, walking with eyes downcast—and passed; but the last one, a sturdy, apple-cheeked lass, not long from the country, glanced up and said a soft “Good day.”

But the leader of the procession, a truly formidable female with an embryo beard, coughed ominously,
whereupon the other dropped her eyes and hurried tremulously after the rest, swinging her little bag.

Maxe, with shoulders hunched, stared and stared until the five sisters had vanished round the next hillside. Then he turned, beaming with exultant malice, to the Professor, and observed with a hoarse chuckle: “I thought so. Paul Schlieker is in for a bad day, or I’ll eat a broomstick. . . .”

“But what have the deaconesses to do with Herr Schlieker?” the Professor asked anxiously.

“They’re going to fetch the children away, of course,” retorted Maxe, almost losing his temper at such ignorance.

“What children?” asked the Professor, at once wishing he had held his peace.

“The foster children that are boarded out with the Schliekers. Well, those that won’t listen must be treated rough. Now they’ll lose the children, and a hundred and fifty marks a month into the bargain. They won’t like that one little bit, the Schliekers won’t.”

And a knowing grin spread all over Maxe’s large and genial countenance.

But the Professor’s conscience gave him no rest. “Do the Schliekers really ill-treat the children?”

Maxe was a countryman’s son, and as cautious as his parents. “How do I know?” he replied. “I don’t go to the Schliekers’ place, and one shouldn’t listen to what folks say. But those five sisters are on their way there, and I’d give a thaler if I could look over the fence and see them grab those kids. . . . Giddap, Liese. We’re going to miss this train.”

“And Rosemarie?” asked the Professor anxiously. “The sisters will take her too, won’t they?”

“The little Thürke girl, eh? Why should they? She’s under the Guardians, the other five brats are under the Welfare Office—quite a different story, Herr Professor!”

“But surely the child can’t be left where she is,” protested the old gentleman, “if the Schliekers are such objectionable people. . . .”

“There she goes!” shouted Maxe, jerking the horses to a standstill. “We’ve missed it—I said we would.”

At that moment a little locomotive and two little carriages emerged snorting and clattering from behind the tiny station building and rattled along the hillside until their noise faded in the silence of the forest.

“There!” said Maxe, as he watched it disappear.

Professor Kittguss stared too. “What are we to do now?” he asked anxiously of his driver.

“You must take the six o’clock train, Herr Professor,” said Maxe persuasively, remembering how anxious his parents had been to get their visitor out of the village. “You can spend a couple of hours looking round Kriwitz. Stillfritz will give you a grand feed at the Archduke.”

As he spoke he got out of the cart, lifted the bag on to the roadway and offered the Professor his hand.

The Professor took it mechanically. “But I feel I ought to get back to Unsadel,” he said, “as the sisters are going . . .”

“Nonsense, Herr Professor,” said Maxe briskly, now back on the box seat. “There’s no call for you to interfere. You leave it all to the Guardians and the Welfare Office, it’s their affair. Good-by, Herr Professor, and good luck. I’ll give your regards to the parents.”

So Professor Kittguss was left alone on the road from Unsadel to Kriwitz, watching the dogcart rapidly receding into the distance. Something was wrong, and he knew what it was, but would not admit it to himself.

Picking up his bag he made his way into Kriwitz, past the station, past rows of the nondescript little houses that cluster round a little country town, past five enormous stores. For Kriwitz is a market town, where farmers come to sell their produce and spend their money.

The Professor, plunged in meditation, was walking right through the town and out into the autumn countryside, when a voice from an imposing gateway hailed him: “Hi there! you with the bag!”

The Professor looked doubtfully at the man in the gateway whose eyes glistened with guile and good living, and whose nose was almost incredibly large and purple.

“Are you addressing me, my dear sir?” the Professor asked cautiously.

The man peered up and down the street. “Do you see any other gentleman with a bag?” said he. “I don’t. No. Well, since you’ve got a bag, you must be a traveler. And,” the man went on, rubbing his hands meditatively, “when a traveler visits our little town, he doesn’t pass the Archduke, he helps old Stillfritz to keep the beer flowing. That’s in everybody’s interest.”

“Indeed,” said the Professor, noncommittally. “So you are an innkeeper?”

“Sir,” exclaimed the other, “all that we are and were and may become, can be better discussed inside over a pot of beer.”

“But I never drink beer,” said the Professor, a remark
which came oddly from a theologian, “least of all in the morning.”

“Not just a little spot?” said the landlord, blinking at him. “Come now?—”

“Certainly not!”

“Well, well—you ought to know better at your age,” said the landlord regretfully. “However, all joking aside, come along in and keep me company for a bit. You can spare half an hour before you peddle round the coffee extract or whatever it is you’ve got in that bag. My dear sir,” he went on, with something like tears in his voice, “just think what it means to look at dead beer taps morning after morning and an empty bar. It’s a sight to make a landlord sick.”

The Professor felt gloomy, too. He had no idea how he was going to get through the five or six hours until his train went. He looked dubiously at his strange companion. “Well, I won’t drink any beer or spirits, though,” he observed.

“You needn’t,” replied the landlord. “But come inside. My wife’s got some good chicken broth on the fire, just the stuff for a gentleman like yourself. You’ll enjoy it.”

“I hope so,” said the Professor, and sat down in the chimney corner with a sigh of relief.

“I know you will,” replied the landlord with a smirk. “So that’s settled, eh? Right. Well, here’s your health!”

He drew himself half a glass of beer, held it gloomily up to the light, and muttered: “Cloudy, confound it,” poured the liquid down his throat, and said more briskly: “In the summer, just about harvest time, we often have a lot of motorists staying here, for a country holiday,
though what on earth they see to admire in the country is more than I can say. Well, then, I’ll tell them to serve you a bowl of that chicken broth. You look pale around the gills. I’ll tell the sergeant major to beat up an egg in it.”

He eyed his guest pensively, and flicked his napkin against his pantaloons. There was a moment’s silence.

“You were going to order me some broth,” observed the Professor.

“So I was,” said the landlord who vanished and at once reappeared. “I never get a chance to open my mouth these days, I’ve almost forgotten how to talk. . . . One day this spring I was standing in the doorway, it was pelting rain outside, when a car dashed up, a smart Berlin motorcar. . . . It stopped and two women hopped out. But I planted myself in the doorway and I grabbed one and I grabbed the other, and I said very pleasantly: ‘Not so fast, ladies, there’s room for everybody. . . . Which of you little dears is the prettiest, we’ll let her in first.’ They yelled and they struggled and the rain trickled down their necks. . . .” He surveyed his guest and again rubbed his vast and luminous nose. “Do you think they saw the joke? Not they! They cursed me up and down, and never came in at all. And the man that was with them actually called me an old fool—Would you say I was an old fool?”

“Yes, I would,” said the Professor emphatically. “And if you don’t bring me that chicken broth, I shall go away too.”

At these stern words Stillfritz retreated to the far end of the bar. “There you are,” he said bitterly, looking at the Professor with a reproachful eye, “a chap takes
a bit of trouble to cheer up his visitors, and they call him a fool. Jokes aren’t understood these days. And no one thinks about a landlord’s feelings. It isn’t just selling beer, I can keep the taps running without help—it’s”—and he peered up at the ceiling—“it’s something quite different. And it’s the weather too. . . . You try keeping a country inn, when Sunday after Sunday it never stops raining, and you’ll know how a man gets to act like I do. . . . The chicken broth will be ready in a moment, sir,” he snapped out suddenly, vanished from the room, leaving the Professor alone.

Alone, in peace and quiet. A fly buzzed, a farm cart passed, from the kitchen a saucepan clinked. He heard a woman’s angry voice, and the landlord’s somewhat plaintive replies. One o’clock struck, the marital duet in the kitchen proceeded, the Professor’s chin sank lower and lower on his chest, his head dropped forward. The stove was so pleasantly warm. . . . Professor Kittguss began to doze a little after the wear and tear of the previous day, and indeed he would have slept through all the twinges of an uneasy conscience until tomorrow, if the door had not suddenly been flung open, and two pairs of feet entered the bar. One sounded alert and peremptory, the other shambled behind it. As the Professor started rather awkwardly into consciousness, the owner of the brisk step faced him with hand raised to helmet and said in a military tone: “You permit me to bring this lad in to the bar, sir? If I leave him outside he’ll escape. He’s tried twice already and that’s why he’s in such a state. Those who won’t listen must be treated rough.”

With these words Constable Peter Gneis surveyed his
prisoner, adding in a stern but not brutal tone: “I think we’d better tether you to the hatrack, my lad. And if you think you can break away with a hatrack under your arm, just try it. You’re quite fool enough, though you aren’t such a fool as you look, and I’d catch you again pretty quick.”

The Professor looked . . . and he looked . . . and he rubbed his eyes. But what he saw was undeniable; here was the secret emissary, Philip, who had brought Rosemarie’s letter to his study two days before, the letter that had summoned him to Unsadel, that had almost led to a quarrel with his faithful old housekeeper, the Widow Müller. Indeed it was Philip, but how shockingly changed!

He had been a pitiable object before, but as he stood here now, the very image of an idiot, oblivious of the Professor and the world about him, gaunt and bruised and bleeding, he was hardly able to stand up. . . .

The Professor was so shocked that he exclaimed: “Good God! It can’t be!—”

“Yes, he’s a runaway farm hand,” said Constable Peter Gneis in a stern tone. “And I shouldn’t like either of us to see the sort of welcome he’ll get from his masters— A glass of beer and a schnapps, Stillfritz. Yes, you may well look surprised. He ran away from Farmer Schlieker’s place at Unsadel. He was found at Gransee, and passed on from constable to constable until we got him here. What in the world he was doing at Gransee we don’t know, and never shall, for the fellow would die sooner than open his mouth.”

“Ah, my lad,” said Stillfritz, rubbing his purple proboscis, “I dare say you haven’t got much of a job at Schlieker’s
place. But you know that the Mecklenburg bylaws say that a fellow has to serve his year, well or ill. And you’re going to get a very thick ear when you get home, you young fathead. However, no one shall say that Stillfritz sent you back to face it without something warm inside your belly. Have a spot to eat, eh? . . .” And he began to work his jaws and smack his lips.

Into that vacant countenance came the faintest glimmer of a smile. All his pain and privation, his torn and battered feet, had left him unmoved; but at the sight of those champing jaws, two large glistening tears rolled down over his gaunt cheeks.

“Hey, don’t cry, boy! I’ll get you something to eat at once— Hullo, what’s all this?”

Beside the landlord stood the tall imposing figure of Professor Kittguss, his bowl of broth in his hand, saying: “It is my special duty to see that this poor lad it fed. And if anyone wants to know why and to whom he ran away, officer, you can say that he ran away to me. To Professor Kittguss in Berlin; he brought me a letter from my godchild. And if there are any expenses involved I will bear them. And if the lad is likely to get into trouble, I will go back with him and put matters straight.”

“And I took you for a traveler in coffee extract,” exclaimed the bewildered landlord.

“Indeed,” said the constable officially, reaching for his notebook. “So you wish to make a statement. . . .”

At this point, all three of them, after the manner of men, would have promptly plunged into a little debate as to the proprieties of the case, instead of doing something practical. But the fragrance of the chicken broth
was too much for the starving Philip. He almost wrenched the bowl out of the Professor’s hand, set it to his lips, and in two seconds it was empty! Philip stared dumfounded into the bowl, looking exactly like the lion in the fable who thought he was swallowing a calf and found it was a pea.