Lieutenant had become so hopeless—even she had to admit he had given up on her. Not because of her, but because the question of the letter that had come into the hands of the little Meier had so angered him. Everything was changed now, however. She was going with her father to Ostade; she would see her Fritz again this morning. He was face to face with great events and his cause would be victorious. Tomorrow he would no longer be a conspirator, having to conceal himself from the world; tomorrow he would be an important man, and her father said so, too. A hero who could openly acknowledge his love, and her. There must be then no more secrecy, nothing which she would have to hide from him; there must be no servant like Rader, knowing things about her.
She demanded her letter back.
He knew nothing about a letter.
Very agitated, she told him he should not be so low.
He replied that he was only a low servant and no fine Lieutenant.
She said she was going to Ostade now to meet him, and she would send him back. “You will see then!”
Rader looked at her with his melancholy dead eyes. Too late she realized that she had set about it wrongly. Too late she began to plead, to offer, to promise money; promised him indeed old Elias’s situation at the Manor. She could obtain that for him through her grandparents!
He only smiled.
She considered a long time, very pale. She must have the letter back. She knew that her Fritz would not forgive such thoughtlessness a second time. Speaking in a low voice, flaggingly, she promised to allow once more … what he before … he knew … in her room.… She gave him her word of honor. But he must hand over the letter at once.…
She got further than had her mother; she could see him begin to waver, as the memory of that dark hour and the highest gratification of his life rose in his thin cheeks, leaving red circular patches there. He gulped. Then he changed his mind. He had calculated for a long time, weeks and weeks. He had a definite plan in which this letter played a definite role. Violet was not enough. She alone was nothing, only a female a little better-looking than Armgard. No, it was the Lieutenant who was concerned. Anguish for the Lieutenant, her love for the fellow, her disgust for him the servant—all that was concerned in it.
“Is the Fraulein motoring today to Ostade?” he asked.
She was sure now of her victory. “You know that, Hubert! At once. Fetch the letter quickly—before Papa comes down.”
“If the Fraulein doesn’t go to Ostade today and this evening allows what has been promised, I will give up the letter then.”
She almost laughed in his face. Not to make the trip to Ostade, for his sake! He was a fool. Anger overwhelmed her. “If you don’t give me the letter at once, I shall tell Papa everything, and then out you’ll go and never get another situation in your life!”
“As the Fraulein wishes,” said he, quite unshaken.
And then the Rittmeister had entered. He would never have noticed anything about his servant, who was, as usual, like a block of wood. But Violet was seething with rage. Within three minutes she boiled over. That, perhaps, was what Rader wanted. Impassively he had passed her dripping when she asked for butter; and sugar instead of salt. Bursting into tears, Violet shouted that unless her father turned out that scoundrel on the spot she couldn’t stand it any longer. For weeks he had tormented and provoked her. He had stolen a letter of hers.…
Immovable and fishlike, the servant offered her father the tray with the fried eggs. The Rittmeister, who had had a very bad night, was at once exasperated. With his fork he gave the egg dish a good hit and, shouting at his daughter, demanded to know what was this about a letter. What letters, in Heaven’s name, did she have to write, even to the good manservant? He turned round and glared at Rader.
Violet’s explanation was hurried and disconnected. She had believed that the arms dump was endangered by the forester’s babbling, and so thought to send the Lieutenant a few warning lines through Rader. But the letter had been purloined by the man and he refused to give it back.
The Rittmeister stood up in fury. “You have intercepted a military communication from my daughter!” he shouted. “The buried weapons are in your power!”
Hubert set down the tray of fried eggs on the sideboard. Coldly he looked at the Rittmeister; and nothing more provokes anger than another’s composure.
“Excuse me, Herr Rittmeister,” he said, “but they are illegal arms.…”
The Rittmeister seized his servant by the lapels of his dark-gray jacket and shook him. Hubert offered no opposition. The Rittmeister shouted; Hubert kept silent. (Armgard’s statement that the Rittmeister had been threatened by his servant was, therefore, a lie. But then, she had never been able to support Rader’s arrogance.)
“Traitors against the wall!” cried the Rittmeister. Then a minute later: “If you hand over the letter now, it shall be forgiven and forgotten.”
“Turn him out, Papa,” said Violet.
The Rittmeister let go of his servant and spoke grimly. “Have you anything to say in your defense? Otherwise you are dismissed on the spot.”
Violet trembled. She knew that Hubert had only to open his mouth, say a few words to her father, and she was lost. But she had taken the risk, since she felt that he wouldn’t talk, that he had no interest at all in exposing her secrets to her father. And she was right. Hubert said only: “Then I am dismissed on the spot!”
He looked round the dining room once more and laid his napkin, which he had kept under his arm throughout the scene, on the sideboard. His eye lit on the fried eggs. “Shall I have them warmed up again?” he coolly asked.
There was no reply.
He went to the door, made a slight bow and said imperturbably: “A pleasant drive, Herr Rittmeister!” Then he was gone, without one glance at Violet.
Plunged in thought, the Rittmeister turned to his meal, for anger did not destroy his appetite. Then he had two cognacs and got into the car. All he said was: “To Ostade then, Finger.”
Herr von Prackwitz was so constituted that after the interval of action came inevitably that of reflection concerning his action. He had got rid of his servant; now he began to consider why he had, in fact, done so. On this question it was not so easy to shed light. Much that had seemed lucid in his rage was now rather obscure. Had the fellow been merely impertinent? Of course he had; the Rittmeister remembered it distinctly. But in what way impertinent? What had he actually said?
Violet sat beside him, careful not to interrupt his reflections with one of those girlish nonsensicalities which, because they could always put him in the best of humor, she usually had ready. A child knows the faults of its parents better than the parents know the faults of their children. A child’s observation is mercilessly sharp. Its first voyage of discovery to the new world is not encumbered by love or sympathy. She saw that her father was thinking about her; any word that sought to distract him would only make for suspicion. She had to wait till he began to speak, to question. He was one of those who pass without effort from this question to that and so lose sight of their original goal completely.
Moreover she had done something, the idea of which had come on seeing her father drink the two cognacs. The afternoon before, at her uncle’s, she had had quite a lot of liqueurs; how many she didn’t know and neither did her father. But the drink had done her good. It had given her courage to defy her mother, which she would never otherwise have dared; it had made her combative and cheerful. And when her father after breakfast went out to put on his coat, she had swiftly poured herself a cognac in his glass, while watching the door. She had filled it to the brim and emptied it at a gulp. Almost automatically she had, like her father, let a second drink follow the first.
And now she was curled up comfortably in the car, warmly covered, while the country glided slowly across the windows—an endless expanse of fields deserted except for a few plow teams in the distance or the long rows of potato diggers shifting forward on their knees, the three-pronged hoe in hand. A moment they raised their heads and looked after the car speeding by. Next the almost unending woodlands, where trees were often so close to the road that branches rustled across the windows, startling the motorists, who then laughed at their fright and saw that the glass was bedewed with drops of water from the branch.
The roads from Neulohe to Ostade were bad, softened by rain and cut up by the potato carts, so that the powerful car could not show its speed; at barely twenty miles an hour Finger drove her cautiously over the potholes and through the puddles. Despite this low speed, however, the deep note of the engine, the car’s elastic springing,
