“Let me come with you,” said Amanda, and hurried with her across the farmyard toward the coachman’s dwelling. “I’m going the same way as you.”
“Are you?” asked Frau Hartig and walked more slowly. “Yes, a girl like you on her legs from morn till night— madam won’t get another like you so easily.”
“I don’t put my legs up as easily as some people,” said Amanda, with meaning. “Well, get along; your husband will be waiting for you.”
But Frau Hartig stopped. They were in the middle of the farmyard. To the right were the pigsties in which there was still an occasional rustling (the sty doors stood open because of the heat); on the left was the midden. The two women, however, stood so that Amanda was facing the coachman’s dwelling at one end of the farmyard, while Frau Hartig looked toward the other end, where she could see a light burning in the bailiff’s window—and, of course, it annoyed her that he should have turned on the light after all.
“Besides, Mandy isn’t the right way to address me,” said Amanda Backs after a longish pause.
“I can call you Fraulein Backs, if you prefer it,” said Frau Hartig submissively.
“Yes,
“So you can,” acknowledged the coachman’s wife. “Any master or mistress would be glad to have a poultry maid like you.”
“Shall we have it out now or shan’t we?” cried Amanda and stamped.
The coachman’s wife remained silent.
“I can talk to your husband if you like,” said Amanda threateningly. “I’ve heard that he’s already wondering how you get such varied children.”
“Varied children,” echoed Frau Hartig with a forced laugh. “How strange you are, Mandy.”
“You’re not to say Mandy. I don’t want to hear it from you.”
“I can say Fraulein Backs if you like.”
“Then say it—and besides, it’s a shame for a married woman to take away a girl’s young man.”
“I haven’t taken him away from you, Amanda,” pleaded Frau Hartig.
“Yes, you have. And one would think that a woman with eight children has got her share.”
“Lord, Amanda,” said the coachman’s wife, conciliatory, “you don’t know anything about what it’s like to be married. You imagine it quite different from what it is.”
“Don’t talk rubbish, Hartig,” cried Amanda threateningly. “You can’t fool me that way.”
“When one’s got a steady man,” explained Frau Hartig, “one thinks all that’s over. But you get that queer feeling again …”
“What queer feeling? Don’t talk nonsense.”
“God, Amanda, I’m not talking nonsense. You must know what it’s like when you feel as if you had a prickling all over your body, and no peace whatever you do, and everything’s got to be done in a blazing hurry, as if you hadn’t a moment to spare—and then you find that you’ve been standing about with a swill pail in your hand for a quarter of an hour without knowing where you are!”
“I’ve nothing to do with swill,” said Amanda Backs cuttingly. But actually she was no longer feeling so hostile; she was giving due attention to what she was hearing.
“No, of course not,” assented Frau Hartig.
“And you’ve got your husband whenever you feel like that. So you oughtn’t to put a spoke in my wheel.”
“But, Amanda, that’s just what you can’t foretell,” exclaimed Frau Hartig eagerly.
“What can’t you foretell?”
“That your husband can’t help you in that at all. If I’d known as a young girl what I know today, I’d never have married, you can believe me.”
“Is that really so?” meditated Amanda Backs. “Don’t you like your husband at all?”
“Lord, yes, of course—he’s quite nice in his way. And quite steady, too. But I don’t like him that way anymore. That queer feeling stopped as far as he was concerned a long time ago.”
“So you like—Hans—Bailiff Meier—much more?”
“God, Amanda, what are you thinking about? I’ve told you already that I’m not taking him away from you.”
Amanda’s voice was thick with rage. “So he was the first to start—I mean, Meier?”
Frau Hartig remained silent for a while, thinking it over. In the end, however, she decided in favor of the truth. “No, Amanda, I won’t tell you a story. I wanted him first—and a man feels it. And then he was a bit drunk …”
“So he was drunk, too! But I don’t quite understand—if you don’t like him at all?”
“Well, you know, Amanda, I don’t understand it either, but when one has that queer feeling, and at the same time can’t help being inquisitive …”
“But you mustn’t!” Amanda prepared to end the scene with a tremendously severe lecture which, to tell the truth, would have turned out milder than at first intended. When all was said and done, she understood Frau Hartig quite well.… But she broke off.
Three persons were walking across the farmyard in Indian file—a man, a woman, then another man.…
They walked through the farmyard in the darkness without a word or a sound—and Amanda Backs and Frau Hartig gaped.
When the first man had approached the two women, he stopped and said in a peremptory voice: “Who’s standing there?” At the same time there shone on them the light of a flashlight held by the woman in the middle. (The moon had not risen very high yet and the stable buildings were still intercepting her light.)
“Amanda,” said Amanda Backs calmly, while the coachman’s wife automatically shielded her face with her hands as if she had been caught in some criminal offense.
“Hurry up and get to bed,” said the man in front, and noiselessly and stealthily the three figures passed by the women, crossed the farmyard and disappeared round the corner of the bailiff’s house where, as Frau Hartig saw, the light had gone out during her dispute with Amanda.
“Who was that?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“I think it was the young Fraulein,” replied Amanda thoughtfully.
“The young Fraulein in the dead of night with two men!” cried Hartig. “I’ll never believe it.”
“The man behind might have been the servant. The one in front I don’t know. He isn’t from here—I never heard that voice before.”
“Extraordinary!” said Hartig.
“Extraordinary!” said Backs.
“What business is it of his if we stand here?” asked Amanda loudly. “He’s nothing to do with the place and yet he orders us to bed.”
“That’s it,” echoed Frau Hartig. “And the young Fraulein allows him to order us about.”
“Where did they go to?” Amanda stared across the farmyard.
“To the Manor?” suggested Hartig.
“No. Why should they go to the back door? The young Fraulein needn’t enter the Manor by the back way,” snapped Amanda.
“Then there’s only the bailiff’s …” suggested Frau Hartig.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Amanda frankly admitted. “But what are they after, behaving so strangely, one behind the other, and so quietly—as if they wanted nobody to see them?”
“Yes, it was strange,” agreed Frau Hartig. And added: “Shall we go and have a look?”
“You’d better get back to your husband,” said Amanda Backs severely. “If anyone is having a look in the staff-house, it’s me.”
“But I should like to know so much, Mandy.…”
“You’re to call me Fraulein Backs. Besides, what will your husband say to your being away so long? And your children.”
“Pooh!” said Frau Hartig indifferently.
“And what’s more, you’re to leave my Hans alone. Another time I shan’t be so easy-going. If I catch you again …”
“You can be sure you won’t, Amanda. I swear it! But you’ll tell me tomorrow, won’t you?”
