An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (23 page)

In which many people go in search of many things and the wrong people find the wrong things

W
HEN
D
R.
G
EORGE
K
IMMKNIRSCH
stepped out to the dark street on his way to the Archduke for a second time that evening a voice called to him from a cart that was clattering past, “Good evening, Herr Doctor!”

“Good evening,” replied Kimmknirsch, absorbed in his thoughts. For a moment he did not notice it was his first patient, Herr Paul Schlieker of Unsadel, who had hailed him so politely.

Whatever the doctor’s opinion of this patient may have been, he called out in reply, “Hi! Herr Schlieker!”

Mali pulled up, and Dr. Kimmknirsch walked slowly toward the cart and said, “Well, how are you feeling?” (Idiot that he was to ask the question!—what did he care how the fellow felt?)

“All right,” said Schlieker curtly, giving the doctor a fixed and searching look.

“All alone?” inquired the other. “How about that search warrant? Didn’t you find the magistrate?”

“Ye-e-es,” Schlieker replied slowly, after a long pause, and said no more.

Kimmknirsch, increasingly annoyed with his own silly persistence, went on, “Did you find anything?” and he pointed to the back of the cart.

Schlieker again eyed the doctor with the same baleful fixity, but this time made no reply.

The doctor could have sworn that the shattered and twisted machine in the back of the cart was the one that had run him down an hour ago. “That bicycle,” he said grimly, “when did you find that?”

And the two men glared at each other.

Schlieker’s sinister eyes gazed fixedly into those of the doctor. Kimmknirsch was not one to quail before any man, nor did he now; but that evening he had made a blunder—indeed, he had made several. He should not have taken charge of the girl, or the boy either. He had entered into an affair, which might prove most troublesome, and he was feeling very out of humor. And now, he was doing a little private detective work for Rosemarie—as this Schlieker fellow might well suspect.

Against his will, the doctor blinked and, to his intense annoyance, dropped his eyes.

Schlieker burst into a roar of laughter. “Well, good evening, Herr Doctor,” he said. “Mali, drive on.”

The cart rumbled off into the night, leaving the sage and self-assured young doctor on worse terms with himself than ever.

Why hadn’t he told the rascal that the two youngsters were in his charge? What had he got to conceal? Was he afraid that Schlieker would take them away by force? Never in his life had he lent himself to such silly deception.
It really looked as if he had become infected by the romantic whimsies of that silly brat! He would go straight to the Archduke and have a talk with Faulmann and the magistrate, and whatever else he did he would make certain of getting on the right side of justice and the law. How revolting to have exposed himself, quite innocently, to that disgusting brute’s ridicule!

Doctor Kimmknirsch swung round, and strode through the squelching mud to the Archduke.

As the cart clattered over the cobblestones of Kriwitz, every bit of metal in it clinked and rattled and clashed, and all the timber creaked and groaned. In the scattered, quiet houses lights were still burning—white, where the upstart electricity had made its way, and yellow where the agelong oil lamps still reigned.

Then, with a last deafening clatter, the cart crossed the track of the little railway at the outskirts of the town, and passed, with sudden noiselessness, on to the sandy Kriwitz road. Only the leather of the harness still creaked faintly.

“That was queer,” observed Paul to the surrounding silence.

“Yes, he was queer,” Frau Mali agreed.

“Snooty sort of fellow on the surface, but he wouldn’t stand up to much, I’ll bet you.”

“Why did he ask about the bicycle?” asked Mali.

“I wonder. He knew something about it.”

“But he couldn’t have recognized Tamm’s bicycle?”

“It’s the bicycle that Hütefritz usually uses.”

“But he wouldn’t leave it lying on the road like that.”

“No, he certainly wouldn’t. Someone else had been riding it.”

“Of course. But who? And where to?”

“Yes, why does anyone ride from Unsadel to Kriwitz at night?”

The horses had been trotting, but the sand here was so deep that for a while they dropped to a walk.

“Very well!” said Paul, in a sudden burst of anger. “Whether there’s a light in Tamm’s place or not, I shall rouse him up tonight and find out what’s been going on.”

“Do wait until tomorrow, Paul,” she begged. “Tomorrow the constable will be here too. . . .”

“The constable! Do you think he’ll be any help? He don’t want to find anything out and he won’t. I’ll have to keep my own eyes open.”

“Do let us sleep in peace tonight, Paul,” she urged. “Don’t worry about the bicycle till the morning.”

“Why are you afraid all of a sudden?”

“Oh, Paul, I’m so tired and done in. And then these fits. . . .”

“Fits—But you said you didn’t have them any more.”

“Yes, of course,” she stopped. “But I’ve felt so strange since the doctor looked at me like that, Paul, so disheartened.”

“You mean you’re going to start ’em again, eh? Then you were lying this afternoon!”

“I did think I shouldn’t have any more, Paul. But it was the way that doctor looked at me! Paul, perhaps I’m not strong enough now. Can’t we get out of it all? We’ve saved a nice bit of money, we could rent a place. Let’s have a little rest, just for a while. . . .”

“Give me the reins,” he shouted. “Damn these whining women!”

Seizing the reins and the whip, he lashed the horses into something like a gallop.

“Hang it all!—it’s no good trusting anyone, they always let you down. Shut your mouth, will you!” he roared. “Not another word. If you hadn’t let the boy escape, we could have fixed the whole thing.”

He stared before him silently into the darkness while they drove on and on, darkness before them, around them and behind them.

And as they drive to Unsadel, we can at last spare a moment for our old friend Professor Kittguss. He is still sitting in the darkness, asleep and dreaming, by a cold hearth and beneath an unlit lamp. But it is no pleasant dream that has come to visit our old commentator on the Revelation of St. John: he stirs, his lips quiver, he thrusts out his hands as though in self-defense against something from which he shrinks.

It is not a pleasant night, this misty October night which has sown discord and mistrust between the Schliekers; which has wafted a girl into the room of a young man who does not know what to do with himself, or her; which has carried the Professor back into his far-off, forgotten early childhood, when he watched, with the fear of nearly sixty years ago, Louise, the cooper’s pretty daughter from the Bergstrasse, three houses away, coming up to him.

“Please, please,” he says, “dear Louise, let me keep it just this once.”

He is only seven or eight years old; but for that reason his mother had sent him out to buy butter and cheese
from the grocer, and sausage from the butcher, for supper: “He must learn,” she says, “to handle money.”

But the tall dark, fourteen-year-old girl, with long shining plaits of hair, does not heed his pitiful appeal; she stands quite close to him, but does not touch him. She says softly in her dark and velvety voice: “Darling, please, just this once more.”

The boy steps back a pace, looks at her desperately and whispers: “I had the stuff put down to our account yesterday and the day before, Louise. If this is found out—if my parents get to know about it—oh, please, not today.”

But the girl does not seem to hear him, though he speaks as clearly as he can—she flashes her eyes at him and says: “Darling, please.”

The seven-year-old Professor cannot resist that voice and those eyes. Very slowly, and against his will, he stretches out his small white hand until it is above her small brown one, he opens it, and drops into hers—a shining silver thaler.

“Thank you very much, dear silly darling, thank you very much,” she cries. “I’ll come again tomorrow.”

And she is gone.

But the boy stands trembling as he watches her disappear. Over his head the trees in the castle garden are rustling in the last breeze of evening. In his dream he can smell that garden. The birds are twittering sleepily, the sky grows gradually paler and translucent.

And the boy wonders whether he shall go back home and tell his mother all about it, or whether he shall lie and say he has lost the money. Then he finds himself in the grocer’s and the butcher’s shops, asking nervously
for what he has been sent to get, and asking that it may be charged. And they look at him so oddly, and seem so dubious as they cut the piece of cheese and take the butter out of the ice chest, and the sausage off the hook—

This dreadful thing happened only four or five times, for Lawyer Kittguss never charged anything, so it was not long before Frau Schwarzloh, the butcher’s wife, dropped a hint to the lawyer’s lady.

But in his dream it seemed that he had suffered it many, many times, that the torment of that small boyish heart had burdened him for many, many years.

There was his mother with tears in her eyes, and his father asking sternly: “Gotthold, what have you done with the housekeeping money?”

But only the voice was stern; the boy felt all the kindness it concealed, and mother did not need to whisper: “Darling boy, please tell us all about it.”

The little heart so longed to shed its burden, and in a torrent of sobs he poured out the fantastic story of the cooper’s daughter, Louise Runge. . . .

“But is that really true, darling?” asked his mother, who had herself begun to sob. “My dear boy, if you have spent the money, tell us, it doesn’t matter all that much.”

Father cleared his throat and Mother said hurriedly: “We’ll forgive and forget, but the Runges are respectable people. . . .”

However, he stuck by his story, and from the dreamer’s throat there came, almost sixty years later, a memory of those wild tears—and the old office messenger was sent to ask whether Herr or Frau Runge would be so good as to step across for a moment, and bring Louise.

The door opened, and the pretty, silent, dark girl came in with her dumpy mother—and in all his misery, little Gotthold Kittguss thrilled at the sight of her. Then his father spoke and suddenly all eyes were fixed on that small boy.

The girl stood in front of him, shaking him by the shoulders and crying: “How can you say such things of me, you wicked, deceitful boy! You spend the money, and then accuse me of taking it. You’re a liar and a thief, that’s what you are!”

“That will do, Louise,” said his father. “Let the boy alone.”

He pushed the girl back, looked his son in the eyes, and said: “Gotthold, look at me—which of you is telling the truth?”

And the boy tried to look at his father and tried to speak, but there stood his lovely enemy. . . .

Then his father struck him for the first and only time, and a steely voice, like the voice of justice, said: “Go to your room, Gotthold!”

But the blow was not the worst thing he had to bear, neither that nor his outlawry, nor his parents’ chill aloofness in the months that followed, nor the other children’s scorn. His own disillusionment, that was worst. How could the birds twitter so softly before they went to sleep, how could the dark girl be so lovely? It was all so unfair.

The sleeper stirred in his dream and moaned.

Many, many years, more than half a century, have passed. Where is the lovely, silent, dark Louise? Long since dead and forgotten? But even now the old man cannot manage money, he hates going into a shop to
buy anything, he always forgets to pay, and he is still alone.

And here he is, alone once more, sitting in the dark, cold shed. Youth has left him and forgotten him again.

His head sinks deeper on his chest, his hands reach for the blanket and pull it over his chilly knees—sleep on, old sleeper, tomorrow is another day—while there is life, there is hope. Sleep!