square. Returning to the table, he lit a cigarette and withdrew the letter from his pocket. The envelope was now damaged beyond use. With the cautious movements of the half-drunk he laid the letter on the table. It was crumpled and he tried to smooth it out. What on earth am I to do? What on earth am I to do? he thought wearily.
The letter was growing wet beneath his smoothing hand. He looked. It had been placed in a pool of cognac and the writing was quite smudged.
What on earth am I to do? he thought again.
He stuffed the messy scrawl into his pocket. Then he took his stick and went into the pouring rain. He must go to bed, sleep himself sober.
VI
Kniebusch hurried as quickly as he could through the heavy rain to Haase’s farmstead. However unpleasant it was for an old man to get wet to his skin, it was ten times better than sitting with that fellow, Black Meier, and listening to smut.
He stopped on the sheltered side of Haase’s barn. In his present state he could not appear before the magistrate. Panting, he wiped his face meticulously and tried to comb out his wet beard. But while he did all this mechanically he was thinking, just as Black Meier yonder: What on earth am I to do? What on earth am I to do?
Once again he felt aggrieved that there was not a soul to whom he could pour out his heart. If he could have told only one person about this crazy business he would have felt easier. But as it was, what he had heard rankled till it was hardly bearable. It was like a sore place on a finger against which one kept on knocking; it was like an eczema which one had to scratch, whether it drew blood or not.
Forester Kniebusch knew from many a bitter experience how dangerous was his growing propensity to gossip; it had often caused great mischief and involved him in the most unpleasant scenes. In this case, however, there was really nothing much to tell—only the drunken talk of a fellow who was mad after women, little Meier.
Having dried himself in the shelter of Haase’s barn he was about to enter the house when the whole thing was revealed to him: he saw Meier in the inn pulling the letter out of his pocket, tearing it open, reading it …
Kniebusch gave a long and high whistle, although it actually took his breath away. His dog by his side, shivering with the damp cold, started and pointed, forepaw raised as if he smelt game. But Forester Kniebusch went on further than his dog; he’d spied the black-coated hog, the wretched boar, in its damp hide and put a bullet through its head. Black Meier had told a lie. “It isn’t possible otherwise,” he muttered to himself. “This chap with his blubber lips and our young Fraulein—no, I couldn’t swallow that. And it wasn’t necessary to swallow it, either. The foolish braggart and liar thinks I don’t see through him. Tears the letter open before my eyes, yet already knows what is written in it. Tells me he has just been with Fraulein Violet and has got a letter from her in his pocket. Of course she’s given him a letter, but to deliver to someone else, and the fellow’s read it on the quiet. Yes, I must think this matter over quietly and thoroughly. I shall be surprised if I don’t get to the bottom of it all, and most surprised if I don’t use it as a rope to hang you with, little Meier. You won’t be able to call me a rabbit and gaping owl much longer. We’ll see then who’ll be in a funk and gape!” Kniebusch turned round and faced the inn. But the inn was not to be seen, because the rain was so heavy.
It’s better not to do anything rash, he reflected. The matter had to be considered carefully, for obviously he must so manage things as to get into Fraulein Violet’s good books. She might be very useful to him one of these days.
Thereupon Kniebusch whistled shrilly the call, “Quick march, advance” and marched off, straight into the magistrate’s living room. He didn’t even leave the dog on the brick floor of the kitchen as usual, but let it make muddy circles with its wet paws on the waxed and polished floor. So sure of victory was he.
But in the living room he got a shock, for not only was the tall Haase sitting there, but in the hollow in the middle of the old sofa lounged the Herr Lieutenant as large as life, his old field cap on the crocheted elbow rest, and he himself shabby and unkempt. He was doing himself well, though, with a large cup of coffee and fried eggs and bacon, and soaking pieces of bread in the fat, like a plain honest countryman. But six o’clock in the evening was really not quite the right time to eat fried eggs.
“Order executed,” reported the forester standing to attention, as he did to anybody he believed invested with authority.
“Stand at ease,” ordered the Lieutenant. And then, quite friendly, a big piece of egg on his tin fork: “Well, forester, still running about on your old legs? The orders passed on and carried out? Everybody at home?”
“That’s just it,” said the forester dolefully, and told of his experiences in the village, and what Frau Pieplow and Frau Paplow had said.
“Old fool!” The Lieutenant calmly went on with his meal. “Then you’ll have to leg it through the village again, when the men are at home, understand? To tell the women such things! I always said there’s no fool like an old one.” And he went on eating.
“Yes, Herr Lieutenant,” said the forester obediently, concealing his fury. He might very well ask this young chap what right he had to snap at him, and why he was entitled to give him orders—but it wasn’t worth while, he’d leave it. Instead, he turned to the tall and wrinkled Haase who had been sitting in his big chair as silent as usual, listening without turning a hair. Kniebusch spoke to him not at all kindly. “Ah, Haase, since I’m here I’d like to ask you about my interest. It’s due in five days’ time and I must know what you intend to do.”
“Don’t you know?” asked Haase and looked nervously at the Lieutenant, who, however, seemed to be interested in nothing but his fried eggs and the bits of bread which he was chasing across the plate. “All that’s set down in the mortgage.”
“But, Haase,” entreated the forester, “we don’t want to quarrel, old people like us.”
“Why should we quarrel, Kniebusch?” asked Haase surprised. “You receive what is due to you and, besides, I’m not as old as you are by a long way.”
“My ten thousand marks,” said the forester in a trembling voice, “which I lent you on your farm was good prewar money—it took me twenty years to scrape it together. And on the last rent day you gave me a bit of paper —I still have it at home in a drawer. Not a stamp or a nail have I been able to buy with it.”
Kniebusch could not help himself; this time it was not the infirmity of age but an honest grief which brought the tears to his eyes. He was looking at Haase, who slowly rubbed his hands together between his knees and was just about to answer when a curt voice from the sofa called “Forester!”
The forester wheeled round, torn from his grief and entreaty. “Yes, Herr Lieutenant?”
“Matches, forester.”
The Lieutenant had finished eating. He had soaked up the last smear of fat from his plate, swallowed the last dregs of coffee. And now he lay stretched out on Haase’s sofa in his muddy boots, his eyes shut. A cigarette in his mouth, he demanded a light.
The forester gave it him. With the first puff of smoke the Lieutenant looked straight into the tearful eyes of the old man. “Well, what’s the matter?” he asked. “I almost believe you’re crying, Kniebusch?”
“It’s only the smoke, Herr Lieutenant,” replied the embarrassed forester.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said the Lieutenant, shutting his eyes and turning over.
“I really don’t know why I listen to your eternal bleating, Kniebusch,” declared Haase. “According to the mortgage deed you’re to get two hundred marks. Last time I gave you a thousand-mark note, and because you had no change I let you keep the lot.”
“I couldn’t buy a nail with it,” repeated the forester doggedly.
“And this time I won’t be hard on you, either. I’ve already got a ten-thousand-mark note ready for you, and you needn’t give me any change. I’m like that, although ten thousand marks are as much as the entire mortgage.”
“But, Haase!” cried the forester. “That’s simply adding insult to injury. You know quite well that this ten- thousand-mark note is worth much less than a thousand marks six months ago. And I gave you my good money!” Grief almost broke his heart.
“What has that to do with me?” cried Haase angrily. “Did I turn your good money into bad? You must apply to the authorities in Berlin—it isn’t my fault. What’s written is written.”
“I only ask for justice,” begged the forester. “I’ve saved for twenty years, denying myself everything, and now
