For another life has broken into it, and the past no longer counts. This life is swift and brilliant. Infinite fire, mysterious adventure, a wonderful darkness, in which one may be naked without shame! Poor Mamma who has never known this! Poor Papa—so old with your white temples! For me ever new paths, ever different adventures! Stupid ugly Black Meier, good for nothing but to get himself a little quarter of an hour’s thrill and then be severely punished for it.
“Is that the scrawl?” asked the Lieutenant, shining his torch on a damp smeared sheet of paper. “The fellow has drowned it in spirits!”
“Oh, please give it to me!” she cried, suddenly ashamed of her emotional scribblings.
“By no means, my child!” he replied. “You won’t send it traveling again and get me to run after it!” He had already put the letter in his pocket. “And I tell you this, Violet, you are not to write to me again. Never. Not a word!”
“But I wanted you so much!” she cried and threw her arms round his neck.
“Yes, of course, I understand—understand everything. Tell me, you don’t keep a diary, do you?”
“I? What do you mean? A diary? No, of course not.”
“Well, I think you’re lying. I shall have to inspect your room sometime.”
“Oh, do! Fritz, do come to my room sometime; it would be wonderful of you if you had been in my room!”
“Good! Good! We can arrange it. But now I must hurry off to the meeting. They’ll be cursing.”
“Today—will you come today? After the meeting? Oh, please, Fritz, do come.”
“Today? Absolutely impossible. I’ve got to come back here again after the meeting—chat with the fellow, hear whether he has told any others about the letter.” He became thoughtful.
“Yes, Fritz, go for him properly. You must make him afraid; otherwise he will tell everything. He’s too disgusting and mean.”
“And you yourself recommended him to me as a messenger—” began the Lieutenant, but controlled himself and stopped. There was no use in reminding women of an error they had committed, in starting a quarrel with them. It always immediately passed beyond all bounds. A different, a much more frightening, thought had occurred to him: the man there might not merely be able to babble about the letter—he knew other things. Perhaps Kniebusch had not kept things to himself.…
“No, I have got to talk to him later,” he said once again.
She seemed to have guessed his thoughts. “And what will you do with him then, Fritz? If he has betrayed you?”
The Lieutenant stood quite still. Even this silly little goose had thought of it, had sensed the danger which was always threatening the Cause, which everyone feared: betrayal. As yet hardly anything had been said; outside a very small circle hardly anyone knew exactly what it was all about, what was intended. Hints were thrown out, loose phrases. Dissatisfaction, hatred, despair, sufficiently abounded in the country. The printing presses in Berlin hurled a new wave of bitterness abroad with every new spate of paper money. Thus a few words were enough, the muffled clank of arms … almost nothing. But the traitor did not need to be well informed, he did not need to know much; if he told the Landrat that someone was running around inciting people, that he had even heard today that the weapons were to be counted in the village …
The Lieutenant let the ray of his torch fall on to the sleeper’s face. It was not a good face, not one that could be trusted. He had had the right instinct when he didn’t want to have this fellow in it.… But that was Violet. She had suggested that he would be such a convenient, unnoticeable go-between, always with access to the Rittmeister’s house and always to be found in the fields, in the woods.… And on the very first occasion the affair went wrong! Always these women had to put their oars in. They had nothing on their minds but their so-called love.
The Lieutenant turned round abruptly. “You are going to bed at once, Violet,” he said angrily.
She was quite frightened by his tone. “But Fritz, I wanted to wait for you here. And then I’ve also got to speak with the forester about the buck.”
“Here? Don’t be ridiculous. How can you think of it? Supposing the fellow wakes up, or someone comes in?”
“But, Fritz, what do you want to do then? If he wakes up now and notices his letter is gone, my letter, I mean, and he gets angry with us, he’ll run off and tell everything to Grandpa or Mamma.”
“Now please stop it, Violet! Please! I’ll see to all that. I shall deal with him after the meeting—and properly, I can tell you!”
“But supposing he runs away before?”
“He won’t run away. He’s drunk.”
“But supposing he does run away before?”
“For God’s sake, shut up now, Violet!” The Lieutenant almost shouted. Then, since he himself had had a fright, he added in a whisper: “Come along now, be sensible. You can’t possibly wait here. Keep watch for me outside the house—I shall be back here in an hour.”
They went out together, felt their way through the dark room and along the dark passage. Now they were in the open again. It was night, full moon and peaceful; the air was very warm.
“Blast the moon! Everyone can see us! Go into the bushes there. In an hour, then.”
“Fritz!” she called after him. “Fritz!”
“What’s the matter? Can’t you be quiet?”
“Fritz! Aren’t you going to give me a kiss? Not even one?”
“Damn and curse!” he muttered. Aloud: “Afterwards, my child, afterwards we’ll make up for everything.”
The gravel crunched and he was gone. Violet von Prackwitz stood in the bushes where Amanda Backs had been standing. Like the latter she kept her eyes on the window of the staff-house. She was a little disappointed but at the same time very proud of standing guard like this.
VI
Forester Kniebusch wandered along slowly, gun on back, through the dark forest. The full moon was already fairly high, but here below, among the tree trunks, its rays made visibility only more uncertain. The forester knew the forest just as a townsman knows his house; he had walked here at all hours of the day and night. He knew every bend of the path, every juniper bush which—eerily like a ghost—appeared amidst the trunks of lofty pine trees. He knew that the rustling he had heard came from a hedgehog hunting for mice, but even though everything was familiar, he did not like going through the wood now.
The forest had remained unchanged for ages, but the times had changed and the men with them. To be sure, there had also been timber thieves in the past. Yet they had always been the same questionable characters whose business was shady and whose reputation was even shadier. One had caught them, they were what they were, and because they were like that, they landed in jail. It hadn’t been necessary to get worried about them; in the end it was they who always did the worrying and paid the penalty of their misdeeds.
But had there been such a thing in the past as a whole village, man by man and house by house, going off to steal wood? You ran about and watched and worried yourself to death, and if you eventually caught one of them, then you were either seized with fear of revenge or with a feeling of shame that such a man should have joined thieves.
In the days of Forester Kniebusch’s youth, during his first years in Neulohe forest, there had been a notorious poacher in the district: Müller-Thomas, who afterwards hanged himself in his cell in Meienburg prison. With this fellow there had been a long life-and-death struggle. Cunning had fought against cunning and strength against strength, but it had been a struggle with more or less the same weapons.… Today, however, they went “hunting” in swarms, with army pistols and rifles! They started the game wherever they found it; they spared no pregnant female animal or one suckling its young—they shot at pheasants, even at partridges, with bullets! If they had poached for poaching’s sake like Müller-Thomas, or for a joint to still their hunger, that wouldn’t have been so bad. But, murderers that they were, they killed simply from the desire to kill. Murderers and destroyers!
/> The old man had now left the dense part of the forest and was walking along a small glade between plantations of pine trees. The little trees were fifteen years old; they should have been thinned out two or three years ago, but one could not get the men. So the plantations had become impenetrable thickets, a mass of thorny branches, uprooted trees fallen in all directions. Even in the daytime one could scarcely see three yards into them. Now in the moonlight they stood there like a black wall.… Whoever had an enemy coming along this path need only conceal himself in the thicket and he could not possibly miss his man. In vain the forester told himself that no one could be expecting to see him coming along this glade now; this was a quite unforeseen errand he was on, and had he kept his mouth shut it would never have come about. So no one could possibly be lying in wait for him in the thicket.
And yet he walked stealthily. He knew where the mossy patches ran, on which one could walk softly, and whenever a twig cracked under his foot he stood still and peered around with beating heart. He had long since put his pipe in his pocket, for one can smell tobacco a long way off in the forest; and he held his three-barreled gun ready to shoot, for even an uncertain shot was better than none at all. He was a very old man. He would much rather have gone into retirement long ago, but that had not been possible. And now he had to walk among the plantations at night because a silly girl couldn’t take care of her heart and her letters. It was a thoroughly foolish business. He wouldn’t be able to spot the buck, and if he did he would miss it. And should he be able to bring it down that wouldn’t be anything—neither the Rittmeister nor his wife would have been surprised if Fräulein Violet said that her stalking expedition had been in vain. “You see, you would have done much better to stay in bed, Vi,” was the most the Rittmeister would have said, and teased her a little.
But no, they didn’t think of that. They actually sent him off after the buck; he had to chase around while the three of them settled their business with that cursed Meier. Whom did they have to thank for their information? Why, himself! Who had got this conceited, thoughtless Lieutenant away from Haase? Why, he himself! And then this young prig could say uppishly: “We don’t need you here, Kniebusch. You go off and shoot the buck. But don’t go playing the fool here among the bushes; otherwise I’ll have something to say to you!”
Fräulein Violet had stood there, she had heard every word of this arrogant speech. She might have been a little grateful to an old man, but no, she merely said: “Yes, do that, Kniebusch, and try and see that I have something to show Papa tomorrow.”
So there was nothing to say except: “Certainly, Fräulein,” and about face into the woods. Therefore he would never learn what did actually happen to Bailiff Meier tonight. Meier would certainly not open his mouth, Räder the manservant would also keep mum, tomorrow the Lieutenant would have disappeared as if blown away, and Fräulein Violet wasn’t one for telling things, however much she liked having things told to her.
Then what had resulted from that calculated tale-bearing which was to have benefited him so much? A nocturnal stalk through the forest and the undying hatred of little Meier! And he could be a really poisonous toad when he was angry.
Forester Kniebusch stood still, sighing. He mopped his brow—it was hot, very hot. But it was not the sultry damp heat in the forest which made him so warm, it was annoyance with himself. For the thousandth, for the ten-thousandth time in his life, he swore firmly to see and hear nothing of whatever might happen to come to his knowledge. He would just go his own way in the few years that he had still to live; he would never again be wise and clever and cunning and calculating. Never again!
As if putting a period after this immovable resolution a shot resounded through the forest, like an “Amen” in church.
The forester started, listening without moving a foot. It was a rifle shot: the crack was sharp like the crack of a whip. And it was the rifle shot of a poacher. For who else could be abroad in the forest at this time?
These two things were certain; but the forester could not decide quite so certainly the direction from which the shot came. The lofty forest wall round the glade re-echoed the sound hither and thither, playing ball with it. Yet the forester could almost have sworn that the report came from the direction in which he was going, from Haase’s field where Fräulein Violet’s buck was browsing. Someone else had fired at it.
The forester had not moved from the spot where he had stopped to mop his brow and heard the shot. He was in no hurry. He was filled with an iron determination. He was a man, he did just what he wanted and nothing else. Slowly he hung his gun over his shoulder, slowly he drew his short pipe from his pocket, filled it and, after a little hesitation, struck a match. Puffing strongly, he carefully pressed the tobacco down once again, snapping-to the nickel lid of his pipe and set off. Purposefully and steeled with determination, he walked steadily away from the place where the shot had rung out. Don’t scald your lips in another man’s pottage. Amen.
Yet the fact is that some people, whether they like it or not, are forever pursued by new events, while others wander through life and hear nothing, getting their bread only when it is stale. The forester, after all, had made not the slightest effort in the afternoon to find out about Fräulein Violet’s letter. On the contrary, he had turned from Meier’s babbling with abhorrence, not wanting to listen to his loathsome bragging—and yet he had learned everything about it.
The forester who smoked so contentedly as he put distance between himself and the poacher, with a grin at his own cunning, was very calmly resolved to traverse slowly the least dangerous parts of the forest until he could quite credibly affirm that every effort and every patient endeavor had been in vain—there was no buck to shoot. This old coward of a Kniebusch, however, was condemned to shoot his buck, and without a rifle!
For the new event from which he so zealously fled came rapidly cycling between the lofty pines down a defile which no moonlight could brighten. Up this defile walked the forester, smoking.
The impact was violent. But while for Kniebusch there was enough soft sand to spare for his old bones, a large rock lay waiting for the cyclist, who struck it first with his shoulder, at which he let loose a powerful oath, although he didn’t know then that his collarbone was fractured. Next his cheek passed over the rough stone so that the skin was scraped off and the raw flesh burned like fire. But this he hardly noticed, for his temple had made the acquaintance of a sharp-edged projection, and a temple is just as sensitive as sleep—both are easily wounded by disturbance. The cyclist, already lapsing into unconsciousness, groaned and was heard no more.
Worthy Forester Kniebusch sat in the sand rubbing the thigh which had borne the brunt of the collision. He would very much have liked to see the other man get on his bicycle and set off again. He, Kniebusch, would have raised no objection and asked no questions, so steely was his resolve not to poke his nose into things anymore.
In the darkness he peered at the other man. Since, however, it was too dark to see anything at all (only someone who knew the forest inside out would dare to cycle down this pitch-black defile) he gradually began to imagine that he saw something, a dark figure which, like himself, was sitting in the sand and rubbing its body.
Forester Kniebusch therefore sat still and peered, now quite certain that the other was also sitting still and peering, that the other was waiting only for him to go away. At first he was undecided, but, on considering the matter, he admitted that the stranger was right. The forester, being to some extent in an official position, ought to go first and thereby signify that he had no wish to pursue the case.
Slowly, quietly and cautiously he stood up, keeping his eye all the time on the black patch. He took a short step, and another, but at the third he fell over for the second time, and naturally right on top of the man from whom he was backing away. The black patch had been deceptive; the forester sat directly beside, even partially on top of, his latest discovery.
His greatest desire now was to jump up imm
ediately and run away, but he had fallen on the bicycle, and this gave rise to some confusion of clothes, pedals, chain, gun strap and saddlebag, quite apart from the pain which his sudden collapse onto thin steel bars and jagged pedals had caused.
Completely shaken in body and spirit, the forester sat there, and if at first he still thought of getting away he yet could not help gradually noticing that the body on which his arm rested was somewhat more motionless than it would have been in the case of a conscious man.
Quite a little time passed, however, before Kniebusch could bring himself to switch on his electric torch. Once this had happened, though, and the beam discovered a pale unconscious face, skinned on one side, things moved more quickly. From the realization that this was the notorious rogue, Bäumer of Altlohe, delivered into his hand as helpless as a lamb, to the resolve to take the wretched poacher and rowdy to the lock-up, was only a step.
With rope and straps the forester made Bäumer into a parcel such as no girl in a store could have tied better or more securely, and all the while he reflected that by this “arrest” he would gain much credit with the old Geheimrat and the young Rittmeister, seeing that Bäumer was an arch rogue, a ring leader, a master thief, a poacher, an absolute thorn in the flesh of every landowner—all of which was proved by the staggard in his rucksack and the gun on his bicycle. Much more important than this credit, however, was the fact that in this riskless manner he was disposing for a long time of his most dangerous enemy, one who had often threatened to give him a beating should the forester ever dare to search his little wood cart. It must truly have been an act of divine providence, that rightly upsets and softens every steely resolve, which had given, helpless into his hands, an enemy who was a match for three men. And thus the forester tied the knots with a feeling of satisfaction such as if he had just experienced the greatest stroke of luck in his life.
Fräulein Jutta, of course, could have told him that one should not praise the bacon until the pig has been slaughtered.